Baptism of Fire (Playing With Hellfire Book 1)

by Jessie Thomas

  “Tough shit,” I snapped. “They’re staying.”

  She sighed, her shoulders drooping. “As I made quite clear before, despite our differences, we share a common enemy.”

  “Kill him yourself. There’s a thought,” Javier remarked.

  “I’d hate to deprive you of the satisfaction,” she replied. “As much as I’d like to, it’s a messy business killing your own kind. But then, you humans would know a lot about that, wouldn’t you?”

  “You’re the daughter of a mob boss,” I said. “Doesn’t that protect you? I’m sure your dear old Dad has murdered a few of his own. He’s ancient, right?”

  “That means nothing. He’s my father’s right hand—or at least he will be if he gets his way, which he usually does,” Cassia insisted. “I know you want to see him reduced to a pile of ash. Tell me you aren’t going to pass on the opportunity? I’m doing my best to hand him to you on a silver platter. You could use the help, you know. He’s a difficult man to hunt down.”

  “So we’ve seen,” Jodi said.

  “What do you get out of it, exactly?” I asked. “How can we trust you?”

  “You shouldn’t,” Cassia answered. “I’m sure you already know that. Take some comfort in the fact that I don’t plan to kill you, at least. I get to watch his demise from a comfortable distance and take what was once his. I’d say that’s a fair deal.”

  I pushed myself up from the floor. Fire lashed through the burn on my shoulder. “That would still make you our enemy.”

  “‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’ Isn’t that how the saying goes?” Cassia’s head tilted to one side, practically elated at the thought. “I’ll hand him off to you and trust that you’ll keep me alive after all this. A life for a life seems an equal trade.”

  “Wouldn’t count on it.” Javier’s voice was bitter and sarcastic, a stern warning. “You’ll understand.”

  “Do we have an alliance, then?”

  “Deals with demons are bad news,” Gemma cut in, shaking her head slowly. “Do you people not pay attention? We’re probably already on the mob’s radar. This is a terrible idea. Which is saying a lot for our track record of historically horrible ideas.”

  “I’m not shaking on it or making a blood pact,” I reassured Gemma. “If you cooperate, if you can lead us to him, then maybe we’ll talk. But that’s a very strong maybe, so I wouldn’t get your hopes up or anything.”

  Cassia looked too pleased to make any of us comfortable.

  That anxiety I’d been trying to fend off was going to make its home permanent, flourishing and wreaking havoc on my insides for the foreseeable future.

  It happens differently this time around.

  The chaos unfurls itself slowly. It’s the sort of off-kilter that’s hard to recognize until you’re in the middle of it. The kind of dream where you only know you’re dreaming once you realize everything’s pulling away at the seams. Like someone’s broken into your house and shifted all your furniture slightly to the left.

  It’s the middle of the night, the city left abandoned. I’ve been on empty streets in the odd hours where people crawl out of the woodwork once they hear sirens and see the splash of red across their houses. The thoroughfares downtown where the lack of humanity gives the glossy high-rises a certain loneliness I can’t explain. An eerie impermanence. Just passing through.

  But this isn’t like that. There isn’t a loneliness here. Instead there’s peace. A calm before the storm. The stars seem a lot closer than they usually are, as if they’ve fought back the light pollution with the brilliance of the Milky Way itself. A delicate swirl of white and violet and magenta hangs like a surreal watercolor painting over my head. Heat glistens on the asphalt and shimmers as it rises, catching the tricolor traffic lights above me. The night smells like warmth, like the earthy scent heralding the rain. Miniature lakes have welled up in the potholes, rivers streaming down into the sewers from the overflow. I can hear the gentle rush of rainwater as the current hits my boots and moves along like it’s supposed to.

  I know this night. It’s odd, how you can remember the tiniest details. How can I recognize this night from any other, when it started out like all the rest? But I’ve been here. I can feel it. My body remembers it. And my first instinct is to run—I don’t want this, I want the scene to change, I want to tear this illusion apart until my fingernails are raw and bleeding.

  Anything but this again.

  How many times can my subconscious possibly be made to suffer?

  I want to wake up.

  But I don’t because there’s someone waiting for me in the middle of the road.

  He’s got his thumbs tucked into the bright red suspenders holding up his turnout pants as he straddles the double yellow line. His back is turned to me, but I’d recognize him anywhere. My heart wants to break all over again, yet there’s nothing left to shatter.

  So I run.

  He catches me when I reach him, pulling me into an embrace. I hold onto him as if every fiber of my being will crumble if I don’t, my arms held tightly around his neck. My mind is quick to forget this is just fiction because he’s there and real and solid and I can feel the flutter of his pulse if I try hard enough.

  It’s real because I want it to be.

  Anthony Moretti smells of wood smoke and the ash that smudges the planes of his face and stains patches of his raven hair a dull gray. He holds me like he understands the weight of our separation even though he only exists as part of my subconscious now. But if this is what my mind is going to offer me, I won’t refuse it. There’s a tremble like thunder on the horizon, and the pitter-patter of gravel dashing across the pavement, but I ignore it. I ignore it because this is as close to whole as I’ve felt in weeks.

  When he pulls away from me, he’s grinning. It betrays the expression that settles in his gaze. Fear. Pain. Distress. I see it all; I feel it as if it were my own, and maybe it is, but he never lets it dispatch that radiant, dimpled smile. I’m relieved that all the important details are there, that I haven’t let them fade or lost them in the scattered trash pile of memories. He’s safe, for now.

  “Some city we live in, huh?” Moretti asks.

  “Some city,” I agree.

  I don’t notice the change in temperature until ribbons of steam begin to rise from the ground. It’s easy to dismiss the balmy air, especially in the aftermath of a rainstorm. But this is an intense heat that seeps through my boots. Hot enough that my soles feel like they’re beginning to melt.

  “We could use a vacation,” he decides.

  “Sure,” I say. “Aunt Meg thinks Iceland is a good idea. We’ll go there.”

  “Aidan would love to see the snow. I’ll take Ally and the baby to Iceland to watch the Northern Lights. Get away from the heat. It’s scorching, isn’t it?”

  Crimson beads down the side of Moretti’s face from his hairline, dripping like sweat. It’s harder to ignore than the tremors underneath us, the heat making the deserted street fill up with steam. The puddles sizzle as they evaporate. My stomach drops.

  “It’s always hot,” I tell him.

  I want to apologize, to undo everything. The words don’t tumble out. Instead, I hear myself ask him, “What am I?”

  Moretti tilts his head to the side, curious. “You’re you, Vic,” he says, as if this is the answer I need and I should feel foolish for considering anything else. “You’ve always been you.”

  “I’m not sure about that,” I admit. “I don’t feel like me anymore.”

  For the first time, his grin dissolves and all that hurt and fear overtakes his face. “We can’t keep doing this.”

  Before I can ask him what he means, the road beneath us gives a violent shudder. I latch onto Moretti, guided by instinct, my fingers wrapped around his wrist. The air no longer smells like damp earth, but fire. The stars have gone dark, a murky haze obscuring the picturesque view. The ground convulses again, nearly knocking us both off balance. A chasm rips the street open wide, swal
lowing the traffic lights, moving swiftly toward us as pieces of the double yellow line break away. An eerie white-blue glow illuminates the darkness where the rest of the streetlights have been knocked out. The heat it radiates is enough to incinerate.

  I hold on for as long as I can. There isn’t an escape. As much as my body wants to run, I’m glued to the pavement, both of us at the mercy of collapsing, melting asphalt and blistering steam and smoke. I grapple with Moretti’s arms, the pit cleaving the road in half blossoming wider. Our fingers reach across the Hellfire. Fingers and knuckles bony white in a desperate attempt to keep hold.

  “Nix!” Moretti yells. “Go!”

  “No,” I protest. “Not again.”

  The pavement under my feet buckles and takes me with it. My fingers slip out of Moretti’s and I lose sight of him, drowning in the dark and Hellfire, the agonizing heat licking at my skin—

  I awoke with a gasp. I wasn’t sure if I’d managed to dampen the noise—or stop myself from screaming—before it ricocheted around the warehouse and alerted anyone else to my nightmare. Daylight fell through the windows, golden and bright. I had no idea how long the sun had been up or what time it was. Jodi had left when Cassia decided to go silent again. Gemma, in an effort to put the most distance between herself and the incendiary, decided to spend the rest of the night in her car parked at the edge of The Raze. Javier and I were left to find sleep wherever we could on the unforgiving floor of the warehouse, taking turns keeping watch over the demon.

  Those sleepless nights had caught up, apparently. Sitting propped against a gritty wall and nodding off for a bit didn’t exactly count as quality sleep. With panic seizing my chest, I pushed myself up from my hunched position, my muscles and spine protesting loudly. The back of my shoulder burned. Whatever was left of the medicine had outlived its potency.

  Javier was still asleep, his chin drooping toward his chest, his arms lightly crossed. And our incendiary captive was wide awake. Studying me.

  Do demons sleep?

  She wiped at the dried blood across her chin with the sleeve of her hoodie, her dark blue eyes trained on mine.

  “I would hate to see what the inside of your head looks like.”

  “Spare me.” I stretched, a poor attempt at working the stiffness from my muscles. The lingering twinge in my side persisted. “I don’t need a therapy session from you.”

  “As if I would want to pick apart your emotional state,” Cassia scoffed. “I have no interest in how much damage Marcus has done to you.”

  “Marcus? That’s his name?”

  Not that it mattered to me. I could just keep calling him what he was. Arsonist. Murderer. Monster.

  “Yes,” Cassia drawled. “Though ‘thorn in my side’ would be more appropriate.”

  I shook my head and trampled down any sardonic laughter. I wasn’t about to publically agree with a demon. “Seems kind of ordinary for a monster like him.”

  “Oh, no. A name befitting an emperor is rather apt,” Cassia said. “His ambition is insufferable. He’s truly among the worst of us.”

  “Can’t say I’m shocked.” I grimaced. I honestly didn’t know how long I’d been sleeping, but my back was killing me.

  “Come to think of it,” she said again, drawing out the syllables, “you seem to be the only one who has gotten in his way.”

  “I doubt that,” I scoffed. “He looks like he’s doing just fine.”

  “He’s been baffled by you,” Cassia said. “To the point of obsession.”

  “That’s not really something I want to hear.”

  Cassia laughed. A pleasant sound, sparkling with derision. “I would say it’s the only reason he’s kept you alive this long, but you’re the one who wounded him, and that’s not a feeling he’s used to. His obsession isn’t without bloodlust. It never is.”

  “Well, shit,” I replied, the heavy sarcasm a byproduct of crappy sleep. “Sorry if I hurt his delicate demonic sensibilities. I’ll try to think about that the next time he kills someone I care about. How terrible of me.”

  “Not his feelings, Fireblood. You can’t possibly destroy something that’s not there,” Cassia said. “You hurt him. Physically. Do you not remember?”

  “That?” I remembered in a vague sense. That had been one of the more chaotic moments of the night better left forgotten. “I had no clue what I was doing. He got in the way of some half-assed pyrokinesis. I’m told that’s not really a problem for you Hellspawn.”

  “Oh, you are an infant.” She grinned like there was a private joke involved here and I’d been left out. I knew I was still green when it came to most things, but I wasn’t a child. “You did much more than that. Do you really not know?”

  “Clearly not,” I said. “But obviously you’re enjoying yourself, so don’t let me stop you.” I finally hauled myself off the floor with a groan. Everything hurt again, including a stiff neck. “If you’re this unbearable, I can’t imagine what the rest of you are like.”

  She seemed unperturbed by my commentary. “You burned him with his own fire,” Cassia explained. “Hellfire, baby Phoenix.”

  I tensed. “Don’t call me that.”

  She dismissed my objection. “A feat that shouldn’t be possible. Least of all by a pyromancer.”

  “I couldn’t have—”

  “Marcus has the burns to prove otherwise. He hasn’t shut up about them,” she countered. “I should know. I’ve been subjected to his wrath. Unwillingly, mind you.”

  “I didn’t,” I answered, the words floundering on my tongue. “I don’t even know how I could’ve—I can’t.”

  “Oh, but you can,” Cassia teased. “Infernokinesis, I believe you mortals like to call it? I’ll admit, after I’ve had to listen to Marcus’ ranting, you’ve piqued my interest. That kind of power doesn’t just simply slip out unnoticed. Aren’t you the least bit curious to know?”

  I clenched my jaw around the lie. “No.”

  So what does that make me?

  “Perhaps we’ll finally have that discussion when this is all over. You’re deluding yourself if you really think you can run away from it forever.”

  “I don’t think that’ll go anywhere,” I warned. “I’m not interested in making this,” I gestured indifferently between the two of us, “a habit.”

  Her gaze wandered over to Javier’s sleeping form, and a flash of unexpected anger tore through my veins. “Have either of you considered that you might be more powerful if we were the ones to train you?”

  The idea was outrageous. “No,” My laughter sounded hollow. “Absolutely not. I can’t believe you’d think we’d actually consider that an option. But then again, none of you have a moral compass to speak of.”

  “Just a thought.”

  “Yeah, well, some thoughts shouldn’t be said out loud.”

  There was more she wanted to say, her lips parted slightly, her gaze a little narrowed and brimming with dangerous mischief. Whatever thought she had after that one was promptly dispatched by Gemma waltzing through the doorway, her car keys jangling beneath the muted beat of her footsteps.

  “Oh, fantastic, you’re still here.” She had a cardboard carrying tray full of cups in one hand and an iced, caffeinated drink of some kind in the other. Still in last night’s clothes, a bit more rumpled from the sleepover in her car. “I thought last night was just a horrific figment of my imagination, but no, we’re really doing this. You know, while I was standing in line for my iced coffee, I almost skipped out on this Magical Mystery Tour to Hell. I can’t even tell you what possessed me to come back.”

  “I would’ve understood.” I met her halfway, and she offered the tray balanced in her hand. “Thanks for coming back anyway.”

  “It might’ve been the sleep deprivation. We may never know,” Gemma said. She kicked at Javier’s shoe with the toe of her boot. “All right, team, rise and shine. I want to get this crap over with before we become a missing person case on the evening newscast.”

  Javier startl
ed awake with a groan, his head lifting so fast that he almost cracked it open on the wall behind him. He mumbled something about it being early—although it’d been a while since I kicked the rust off my Spanish. He looked up at me with one eye reluctantly open and the other squinting.

  I passed him a cup. “Good morning.”

  “Good? Haven’t been up long enough to decide yet.” He popped off the top and took a large sip despite the puff of steam it’d released, then recoiled when he realized his error. “Ah, fuck. That’s hot.”

  “You’re welcome, Mr. Obvious.” Gemma grinned, dodging the look Javier shot her. “Can we get this show on the road, or do we have to wait for the suit to get here?”

  “We’ll catch Jodi up,” I said. “She’s working right now, I don’t think she can get away from the office.”

  “And she’s trusting us to do the planning after our last disaster,” Gemma said. “Nice. I see we’re a team that consistently makes good choices.”

  “I’d say it can’t get any worse than last time,” Javier replied, “but we all know that’s not true.” He pushed himself off the floor, wincing at what I assumed was a combination of sore muscles and that wicked pyro burn. I cringed in sympathy.

  “I can’t believe I’m asking this,” Gemma pushed the ice around her cup with her straw, “but what’s the demon think our next move should be? We’re obviously getting nowhere. Might as well dive headfirst into the deepest pit of Hell while we’re at it.”

  “I am sitting right here,” Cassia said, her first words to someone other than me. “You could, perhaps, just ask.”

  Gemma made a face, and copied Cassia’s snobby manner of speaking. “Oh, cursed Hellspawn, I’m aware. Painfully so,” she said, adopting an Old Hollywood accent. “How should I put this delicately? I despise you.”

  “So we’ve established,” Cassia deadpanned.

  “Look, I know there’s no love lost between any of us,” I said. “That’s fine by me. But if you’re going to hold up your end of this, we need to know how to catch Marcus.”