Baptism of Fire (Playing With Hellfire Book 1)

by Jessie Thomas

  “Not a fucking chance,” I spat.

  “Hellfire will get you a lot more in this city,” Marcus said. His leather dress shoe scraped against the floorboards as he shifted in his chair. “If you stopped being too chickenshit to use it. You could do so much more.”

  Like brother, like sister.

  “What’s he talking about, Nix?” Javier’s voice was so quiet that a stab of anxiety jolted through my heart. The guilt started to unfurl, even though it didn’t have a reason to. I knew as much about this as he did. I’d never had a moment to understand what I’d done or what kind of power I had beyond pyromancy.

  “Ah.” A shit-eating grin overtook his bony face, the effect more sinister than delighted. “It looks like my sister’s not the only one keeping secrets. Well, I mean, I guess this makes things more interesting for me. Don’t you think? I have a theory…let’s see if your friend here can prove me right.”

  “Don’t,” I warned.

  “Come on, Victoria, aren’t you curious? You’ve got to be. We’ll have fun, you and I.”

  I scrambled up from my chair fast enough to knock it over, my hands thrust outward in front of me as if it would do anything to get him to change his mind. Heat rushed to my fingertips, tiny dots of light starting to make my skin glow orange-red. “Stop.”

  Cassia spared us one last glance and disappeared in a flurry of embers, the room once again blossoming with that sulfuric demon smell.

  Well, fuck you, too.

  A tiny, relatively inconsequential flick of his fingers—blink and you’d miss it, because I did—and my feet were suddenly swept from underneath me. I felt myself flying, my stomach plummeting when I caught the air, pushed backward by the pressure of an invisible heat. I thought I heard Javier shout at me, but it was lost in the sudden rush of wind past my ears. It lasted no more than a few horrifying seconds. I squeezed my eyes shut and waited for the impact, for bones to break or my head to split open.

  Pain rippled across my spine, nearly knocking the wind out of me. The burn on my shoulder flared to life when I finally collided with one of the polished, wooden support beams. Once room quit spinning and bright spots no longer lashed across my vision, I saw Javier in a heap miles away, imprisoned by the stack of chairs Marcus had thrown him into.

  I tried to push myself up and didn’t get very far—Marcus stood, languid and resolute, letting another gust of pressure roll off his fingertips that pinned both me and Javier down. It crushed against my limbs, suffocated my lungs like I’d just been slammed with the full force of Perdition Falls’ humidity.

  With a hint of brimstone suffusing the air, Marcus’ skeletal cheekbones illuminated in flickering blue. Hellfire danced above his palm, a pillar of deadly flame. He stared directly at me, those hollow eyes never leaving mine, before he pitched it toward Javier.

  Marcus’ other hand was still trained on me, his fingers splayed apart while his power spiked. Holding me down. Keeping me from my own fire.

  “Javier!”

  Please let him have that power, too. Please let him find it…

  I can’t lose two people to Hellfire.

  His head snapped up, his arms out in front of him a moment before the Hellfire had a chance to land. I saw the glow of red-orange across his fingertips once he realized he could move, and without knowing how, or why, Javier catapulted the blast of Hellfire back toward Marcus’ feet. A bright flare that sent a burst of white-hot sparks in all directions. He hopped out of the way with a wry laugh, following the fire with his eyes as it finally hit the floor and kept burning, leaving a char mark across the wood. Javier stared down at his hands like they belonged to someone else while the glow started to fade.

  “Nix—”

  I could hear the alarm in his voice. I didn’t need to see it.

  “Looks like your friend here could make himself useful, too,” Marcus said. When I finally looked, I found that he’d dropped into a crouch in front of Javier. “But it’s just too damn bad, Santos. You see, you’re worth a lot more to me dead than you are alive. You,” he spat out the word like it was meant to be poison, but Javier’s gaze was still worlds away from this room, “you and your whole fucking family.”

  He grabbed a fistful of Javier’s hair and wrenched his head back to expose his neck. I watched the tremble of his Adam’s apple when he swallowed hard, but the words Javier spat back at him were unflinching. I couldn’t quell the smirk that lifted one corner of my mouth as soon as they scorched the air.

  “Eat shit, motherfucker.”

  Blue flames ignited in Marcus’ other hand. “You had to know this wouldn’t end well for you.” He held his palm dangerously close to Javier’s face; the electric blue light found the sweat dripping down his temple. Javier took a deep breath, his eyes hard and defiant. “And me? Well, I’m going to watch you choke on Hellfire, and then I’m going to finish my drink.”

  The glass doors flew open as a young waitress breezed into the room, her ponytail swinging behind her, a pile of cloth napkins in her fist. “Excuse me, you can’t be in here—”

  I couldn’t begin to imagine what she might’ve thought once she stumbled upon this unexplainable scene, but it made the rest of her sentence die on her lips. Her eyes went wide at the Hellfire on Marcus’ fingers. Marcus let out a snarl, and before I could get a warning past my parched tongue, he sent her soaring backward into one of the glass windows that flanked the door. It shattered from the impact of her body, the sound loud enough to elicit shouts, the storm of glass beckoning quick footsteps.

  I saw a smear of crimson on the glass still clinging to the frame.

  My stomach roiled.

  Marcus tossed the Hellfire meant for Javier through the broken window and it landed on its vulnerable mark. I bowed my head against the screams, the roar of flame as it incinerated.

  He had everyone’s attention now.

  The disruption meant that the force shoving against my ribs had lessened a little. I wiggled my fingers to test their limitations and hoped that would be enough, focusing all of my energy on the Hellfire that crept up the splintered window frame.

  Come on, I pleaded. Come on, just this once. Work with me.

  No time like the present to learn Infernokinesis.

  The embers woke up in my veins and radiated their orange light, filling me with heat and power. I propelled it outward to the Hellfire instead. I knew Marcus felt the surge coming from my fingertips, traveling up my arms as it lit a path, when his shoulders tensed.

  But he wasn’t quick enough. Not this time.

  I saw his knowing look, tempered with a hint of surprise, just as he realized too late what was happening. The fire swept up on a current. It careened without stopping, shifting color slightly in midair, a shower of white-blue sparks exploding into the dark room as it hit Marcus in the face. He staggered back with an inhuman yell, his hands thrown up like it would help the agonizing burn eating away at his flesh.

  It wasn’t his Hellfire anymore. It was mine.

  While he was distracted, I scrambled away from the support beam toward Javier. I grabbed his hand to haul him up from the floor. My skin was still warm from the power that had hummed through my veins, my hands still harboring some of that glow. Javier couldn’t stand up entirely straight, one hand pressed against his abdomen.

  “We’ve really gotta talk.”

  “I know, I know. Later,” I promised. “Let’s get out alive first. Are you all right?”

  Javier nodded, then grabbed a hold of my hand and shoved me behind him. I’d been too dazed from the Hellfire and the commotion that now gathered in the hallway outside to notice that he’d done it to put himself between me and Marcus.

  Marcus’ face was raw and red and bloody—blood that trickled deep scarlet down the end of his angular nose and smeared across his forehead. Blood that would soon congeal, rotting and putrid. A seething rage bubbled up in his veins. Even I could feel it.

  I thought he might incinerate the two of us on the spot, that we’d bec
ome a pile of ashes in the time it took for me to breathe again. I squeezed Javier’s hand so hard my knuckles turned bone white.

  He pulled me closer. “Together.” His command was a whisper, a reassurance.

  Heat flushed against my fingers, Javier’s power mingling with mine as the temperature in the room rose around us. Javier’s hand was slick in mine, but I kept my clammy fingers tangled between his, determined not to lose my grip.

  Breathing hard, his hair disheveled over his mangled face, Marcus’ nostrils flared as he left behind inky droplets on the floor. I saw our hands illuminated against the dark.

  Together.

  He charged at us, a monstrous yell piercing the room. We should have collided, but he was gone, out on his own terms, charcoal smoke wafting over us. A burst of blue embers and the lingering scent of brimstone was the only evidence that he’d been here. I let out a loud, angry exhale while Javier swatted at the acrid smoke.

  I should’ve punched Marcus when I had the chance.

  “Hate it when they do that,” he said. “Bastard.”

  “He’s not done,” I warned. “He wouldn’t leave that quickly, not while I’m still here. We have to evacuate the whole building.”

  “I think he already did that.” Javier pulled me toward the door. The Hellfire had extinguished with Marcus’ departure, though the damage it left behind hadn’t been undone. I couldn’t even spare a thought to what the people outside had seen. “But he’s probably gonna light this place up. He’ll want a fight now.”

  He grimaced at the mess the demon had left behind. I only caught a glimpse of the ashes strewn across the broken glass, the tear-streaked, bereaved faces on the wait staff who’d crowded around them. They’d all just watched their coworker get killed in a way that maybe none of them could understand. I knew that for those who were a part of this city’s secret, the night had just gotten monumentally worse. That they’d never be able to get the sight of her death out of their head. That it would become their nightmares.

  My heart gave a painful stutter while Javier navigated us around the crowd. He tugged me gently behind him again, using his body to shield me from the worst of it. I noticed, then, that Javier was right. Everything had already exploded into mayhem—someone’s horrified weeping drowned out the music. There were raised voices on top of other voices, and yet I couldn’t hear any of them.

  “Don’t look, Nix,” Javier whispered. “Nothing we can do for them now except catch him.”

  I buried my face in the back of his shoulder just as the fire alarm went off.

  26

  The blare of the fire alarm never used to freak me out. It was always a signal, a sign that things were working as they should. After focusing on the job in front of me, it usually faded into the background. There hadn’t a smoke detector shrieking from the depths of that abandoned house. And yet now, with the wailing of the alarm and the haze of gray filtering through the rooms, it made me sick. Where training should’ve taken over—there were bodies and elbows jostling me like a damn mosh pit in a crowded club—I only felt a choking tightness in my lungs and dread that wrapped itself around my heart.

  I hadn’t caught sight of any flames on this level of the building. Wherever Marcus happened to be lurking, shielded by shadow and smoke, I knew he was biding his time.

  Waiting for me.

  The relative calm of the crowds evacuating wasn’t exactly a surprise. We were all pretty damn efficient in an off-duty crisis. At the first sound of the alarm, people thought it was a hoax; some jackass trying to cause unneeded panic. But then the smoke started drifting in, thin and light like coils from a cake laden with freshly extinguished candles.

  Expertly disguised.

  There were different levels of confusion and fear. The pyros sensed what kind of presence was in the building. They knew this was far from an insensitive prank.

  My heels crunched over broken glass, leaving trails of sticky, dark wine spilling over the floorboards. I felt Javier’s deep sigh when a handful of cops began directing everyone toward the exits. Wherever the closest on-duty firehouse was, their response time would probably be shit. This was the one night a year where the department was spread the thinnest. It was better for them if they didn’t show up. The thought that the incendiaries must’ve intercepted calls or snarled emergency lines across this part of the city only ended with images of burned rigs and more incinerated firefighters than I wanted to picture.

  Ozias and Gemma nudged past people and overturned chairs and crooked tables toward us. It was a relief to see them. Smoke tickled at the back of my throat, thicker now, murky like a gathering storm. I finally found its source—it was pouring out of one of the main staircases from a floor above.

  I knew what kind of fight Marcus wanted.

  I sucked in a shaky breath from under the fabric of my blazer. I’d shoved over my nose to chase away the smoke, but it wasn’t much help. I coughed when some of it slithered into my airway.

  “Where’ve you been?” Ozias asked.

  “About to ask you the same,” Javier said. “Where’d Jodi go?”

  “She ran around back,” he told us. “Off to flag down the detective.”

  “What did you do with our demon?” Gemma wanted to know. “Not that I’m fond of her or anything, but like…you had one job.”

  “So did you,” I argued.

  “You lost two demons,” Gemma said. “Two.”

  “He’s still here,” Javier said. “We pissed him off.”

  “What else is new?” Gemma mumbled.

  “Nothing we can do about it now,” he continued. “Let’s get these people out before someone else gets killed, yeah?”

  Javier motioned to her, and the two of them disappeared in the direction of the secondary exit on the other side of the dining room.

  From somewhere next to me, Ozias let out a cough from the aggressive, pungent smoke. The crowds around us had made it outside, the last of the restaurant staff hustling for the doors. I heard someone wailing in the back, reluctant to leave. The cops were giving us looks, incensed that we had no plans to leave.

  “The stairs,” I shouted. “Santos and I have to head upstairs.”

  Ozias let the words died in his throat as the air in the room changed again. A gust of hot wind burned at the sweat across my brow. The shadows in the room moved. I saw something emerge from the pooling dark in a burst of embers. The acrid scent of Hell reached through the Earth.

  Ozias swore once the incendiaries came out of hiding, drenched in black and parting the heavy smoke. There was no mistaking them. They weren’t exactly the model-esque types. They had sharper edges; less elegant lines and soft features and more hardened eyes and strong jaws. Possibly lower in the demon hierarchy, but they still carried an ethereal, ancient power. Only two of them, because it would take less incendiaries to kill the four of us.

  The temperature in the room spiked, the heat caressing my skin. Everything was swathed in blue just as the dimmed lights offered one last pathetic flicker before they died, leaving us at the mercy of the night.

  Now the city decided to have a blackout?

  Of all times for the grid to call it quits. It could’ve been typical Perdition Falls dysfunction, or a side-effect of demonic fuckery.

  Most of the cops hightailed it to the exit at the first sign of Hellfire. A younger one, fresh-faced with muscles straining the sleeves of his uniform, stayed behind. The cop withdrew his gun and trained it on the demons. His hands weren’t the definition of steady.

  “Stay back!” he ordered. “Stay the fuck back!”

  But he’d brought a gun to an incendiary fight.

  Not really his smartest move.

  “Are you kidding me with that crap?” Gemma yelled from somewhere in the dark. The wards around her found the edges of her clothes, painted red highlights in her hair. “Get your sorry ass out of here.”

  The cop backpedaled slowly, breathing hard. The incendiaries crept further into the blue light of thei
r own making, the air around them heavy with their infernal flames. I kept my hand fisted at my side, already feeling my skin glow hot. Ready to strike, no matter if the fire missed its target. Like it usually did.

  A shot went off. The bullet was swallowed up by a wall of Hellfire just as I saw Javier’s pyro flame arc across the room.

  Too late.

  The incendiaries’ flames traveled further than the bullet ever had, consuming a line around the cop’s shoes, tangling up his legs. Devouring him until he and his useless gun were nothing but dust.

  Well, shit.

  Another shock of blue flickered past me and headed straight for Ozias. He dove out of the way, the embers catching part of his jacket but not finding purchase. I heard the hiss of fire, the hint of singed fabric as a table collapsed beneath his rough fall. Ozias tugged off his jacket and left in the clutter of wrinkled tablecloth and broken glass and porcelain dishes underneath him.

  “The hell with that, I’m not staying here. You’ve got that power, use it.”

  Back on his feet, Ozias called up his fire, each palm spitting out a jet of flames that forced the demons back. Their clothes took most of the hit, flames rolling and guttering until they snuffed out.

  It was a great time for my hands to shake. If I couldn’t control my fire, I didn’t know how I was supposed to extinguish a demon. Javier had made it sound so simple.

  And yet.

  I let the deep orange flames gathered on my fingertips fly, dashing ahead, trying to gain more ground to cover the distance between us and Gemma and Javier. My shin knocked against an overturned chair, a stab of pain that reached bone-deep. There was a graveyard of abandoned, toppled tables and chairs separating us. I didn’t wait to see if any of my fire landed or made a dent in the incendiaries. At best, it would slow them down a bit. I kept calling up more fire while I wove between the tables, a stifling heat working its way up my arm.

  The room became a volley of fire around my head, flames crisscrossing each other, blue mingling with reddish-orange, dancing and shooting off the wards Detective Rashid had set earlier. A bizarre light show, a dazzling display of pyrokinesis and something much more infernal warring against each other. Gemma’s wards blossomed in between them, webs of smoky lace bright red revealing the building haze. Burn streaks smoldered in the dark. I crouched behind a table with the cloth askew, drenched in a toppled glass of rosé, to finally wrench off my blazer. I was already overheating.