As if on cue, the temperature ramped up again, another draft of sulfuric air announcing the arrival of more incendiaries. More silhouettes in black, parting from the shadows in embers and new ribbons of smoke. Angular, beautiful faces hiding the chaos they’d come to unleash.
Marcus had a lot of friends.
And, as usual, we were fucked.
I heard Gemma’s frustrated groan. “Any bright ideas, friends?”
The floor lit up, tangles of electric blue flame branching outward from the incendiaries’ feet, meandering between tables and chairs. The flame only blackened a path where it came in contact with the hardwood floors. A controlled burn. Focused. Precise, like the deft hand of a trained killer.
It sent us scrambling.
I hopped onto a table and it wobbled precariously underneath me. The incendiaries moved in, the lines of their faces holding shadows where they weren’t shrouded in blue.
A dash of flames screamed through the air toward my head. I caught them before they reached me, more of a reflex than any sort of knowledge that I knew what I was doing. They stopped, suspended between us, flaring wildly as they made the subtle shift from blue to white. A trickle of sweat dripped down the curve of my jaw. The veins in my hands and forearms strained with the weight of power, embers under my skin following their path. The flames sparked as I sent them back, exploding and bright white when they hit the incendiary in the chest. He roared, flailing, trying to rid himself of the fire now climbing the lapels of his jacket.
I jumped from the table, racing past the incendiary fire for Javier and Gemma. Javier was using an overturned table as a shield, while Gemma perched on top of one, settled on her knees. She deflected anything that came too close.
“Santos.” Smoke hit my lungs and I doubled over, thinking I might cough them up. “Use their Hellfire!”
He did say on the job training was imperative.
“There’s too many of them and not enough of us,” Gemma shouted. “I knew this job would get me roasted.”
The barrage of Hellfire seemed to overpower the flame, the room lit up in a storm of electric blue as the demons tried to exhaust us. Javier groaned when his attempt to steal their Hellfire fizzled out.
They made it look so simple. They had the advantage of pulling it to them without thinking too hard. Just another reflex. A primordial instinct.
“We have to get close enough to snuff them out,” Javier yelled over the roar of flames darting around us. Ozias made his way over, the constant line of his fire licking at the demons’ feet. Unlike the pyromancers, it did very little to deter them. “If you and Oz can cover us, we might have a shot.”
The red glow of Gemma’s wards reflected against her lenses. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
I grimaced. When did we ever?
The room trembled. Gemma’s brow knit together, her gaze falling to her hands like maybe she’d just made a mistake. She leaned over, and we followed her line of vision to Ozias. He’d lost his balance, which broke the flames he’d carved across the floor. The air rippled, but not in a way that accompanied the presence of a demon.
It was a shudder. A shockwave.
The smoke undulated, gathering a lightning storm when it shot forward, billowing and iridescent as it went. It found two of the demons and threw them back so far I thought one might’ve gone out a window. Another incendiary scraped themselves off the floor, discovering quickly that their Hellfire sizzled out on their fingertips.
Gemma smiled once the thinning smoke revealed Detective Rashid. “And you didn’t think that would ever work on demons. For shame.”
“Is that a complement, Gemma?” Zahira asked.
“It’s the smoke inhalation,” Gemma answered. “Don’t get used to it or anything. Your people back at PCU might get the wrong idea.”
“Nothing to do with the fact that she just saved our asses, right?” Ozias laughed.
Javier’s wide, brown eyes found mine through the haze. At first, I thought he was reacting to Detective Rashid’s arrival. But his gaze was much further, settled on something behind me. The relief on his face soured into fear. My heart thudded painfully against my ribcage before promptly dropping to my feet.
“Vic!”
I didn’t have time to process whether or not Javier had called me Vic or Nix—the two were similar, especially in the context of fire combat and the fact that he’d never called me Vic since we’d met.
A shadow fell over me. I felt it more than I saw it, the edges of my vision going black, the telltale heat of an incendiary trailing up my spine. Fingers that didn’t seem fully human—not solid enough, blistering on my bare skin—pressed into my biceps as sulfur engulfed my senses. I thought for a second that I’d be dragged under, that I’d finally get pushed into that chasm of Hellfire haunting my nightmares.
But this time, I didn’t want to succumb.
I wanted to fight.
Pushing my elbows back, I tried to land forceful, quick jabs to break the demon’s grip. The illusion of fingertips scalded my arms, branding my skin, stronger than they had any right to be. The whisper in my ear sounded a lot more demon than human-adjacent, lost through the garbled filter of whatever grotesque form they’d taken.
Still, I heard Cassia loud and clear.
“Hold on, Fireblood.”
The room was lost to a cloud of endless black. An odd sensation wrapped me in its grip, my body freefalling and coming undone all at once.
It took less than a minute. A few breaths that I wasn’t entirely sure I’d exhaled all the way. My body didn’t feel whole or even like it belonged to me. There was the void and the weightlessness, the suffocating warmth and the rancid brimstone churning my guts. The entire fabric of my being was ripped apart and sewn back together again, then dropped off someplace else.
By a demon.
I could only hope that everything, including my soul, came together intact.
There was still heat and flame when I opened my eyes. The sulfur of whatever hellish place we’d traveled through to get here lingered on me. I reeked of it. I was left on my knees in an empty hallway upstairs, far away from the stylish décor and rustic chic interior design. Blue flames thrashed the walls but never touched the floor. They kicked up a fierce, searing wind, curving upward to the ceiling to form a tunnel where nothing else existed.
It felt so fucking familiar. I wanted to scream. Grief tempered my veins, but I could see through it now. I could move without it dragging me down. And the rage was still consuming me, burning like wildfire. I was glad for that. I’d need it.
I needed to fight.
The silhouette of a demon materialized through the flames down the stretch of hallway. Marcus’ gaunt face took in more shadow than light. His eyes weren’t ablaze with the eerie blue of Hellfire; they were bottomless pools shining like the onyx in his ring.
Cassia kneeled behind me, one of her bony kneecaps digging into the small of my back. The soft rustle of her dress and the arm she had hooked around my neck told me she’d assumed her usual human disguise. Her manicured nails bit into my shoulder to keep me from bolting, her loose curls skirting the side of my face.
“How poetic this is,” Marcus said slowly. “Though I admit I’m disappointed we weren’t able to come to an agreement, Victoria. Such a terrible waste of power.”
I resisted the sting of Cassia’s nails as she tugged me flush against her chest. She dug in extra hard when I groaned, impatient.
“Enough with the dramatics,” she said, and I could almost hear her eyes roll. “Or I’ll kill her myself and steal the satisfaction right from you. What will Father think then?”
Never trust a demon.
“You’re in no position to give me orders.”
“I am the one who brought her to you.”
“So you’ll let me enjoy this,” he said, fury quick in his hollow gaze. “And you’ll keep your mouth shut.”
Cassia’s fingernails pierced my skin, sharp enough to draw blood.
“I’ve a right to kill her just the same as you,” Cassia answered. “Or must I remind you that we have the same vengeance in our blood?”
They were having some kind of secret sibling-only conversation. I didn’t want the last thing I was subjected to on this Earth to be their petty, sniveling family drama. Even if it somehow included me.
Marcus growled, a sound that couldn’t have been human. He didn’t argue, but he didn’t look too happy to agree with her.
“Vic!” A new voice echoed in the stairwell over the howl of wind and flames. “Vic?”
His voice was hoarse and I told myself it was because of all the smoke and brimstone saturating the air around us and not that he’d definitely just called me a name he hadn’t called me before.
I craned my neck, attempting to twist in Cassia’s grip around my windpipe. It wasn’t her chokehold that finally forced all the air out me. It was Javier as he turned the corner and found us. It was Javier as he only saw me and Cassia, not the demon haloed in Hellfire behind him.
It was Javier when he crossed into Marcus’ path.
“Go!” My words were strained under the pressure of Cassia’s arm. “Get out of here! Javier, run!”
Marcus stepped forward and called to the Hellfire, giving it permission to move. The flames snaked across the floor and the boards underneath Javier started to creak and groan. I clawed at Cassia’s arm, my fingernails leaving behind angry welts that bubbled up with fresh, dark blood.
“Let me go,” I screamed. The words were like rusty nails on the back of my throat. “Get the fuck off me! Javier!”
Javier froze where he was, his attention pulled to the end of the hallway where Marcus stood waiting with a grim sort of patience while the flames lapped dangerously close to his shoes. I couldn’t see Javier’s face anymore—just the soft flutter of pitch black hair in profile—but I noticed the pinpricks of red glowing, gathering at his fingertips.
He was ready to fight.
And so was I.
Once the fire wavered on his palm, a beacon of gold in the middle of an electric blue firestorm, he launched it at the demon. Marcus dodged it, laughing, stuffing his hands into his pockets as he took a step forward. I could see Javier studying the wind tunnel of Hellfire around us, mentally calculating his plan of attack. Trying to figure out how to use the incendiary’s weapon against him.
“You goddamn traitor.” I glared over one shoulder at Cassia’s unyielding eyes. The weakened floorboards protested, each sound a splinter directly through my chest. “Let me go.”
The plea came out halfway between a scream and the closest to a sob I’d heard from myself in a long time.
Cassia leaned closer to my ear and let out a decisive hiss. “Kill him.”
It took me a fraction of a second to realize she was talking to me and not her brother. That for the moment, she was choosing a side.
And it was ours.
I dropped onto my stomach once she release me from her smothering grip, my hands braced under me to stop my face from slamming into the floor. In the next breath I was up on my feet, my head ducked slightly as if I was afraid the flames above us would swoop down and annihilate me if they were given the order.
The old floorboards shuddered and popped. Javier backpedaled, desperate to avoid the seared wood. I lunged for him the moment I saw the blurred motion of Marcus’ hands.
Not again. Please, not again.
But something buckled, a sharp, percussive sound like lightning hitting a tree branch. We both slipped. I fell onto my knees, the force hard enough to knock my teeth together. Javier stumbled over the edge into the gaping maw that had opened up, the floorboards eaten away too quickly for him to escape.
“Javier!” My fingers locked around his wrist, the weight of his body dangling there pulling me forward. I lowered onto what was left of the floor, stable for now, lying on my stomach so I wouldn’t slip over the edge with him. Charred boards fell away and spiraled like blades on a helicopter, Hellfire raining down on the floor below us. “Hang on, okay? I’ve got you. Just hold on.”
I reached for his other hand, and the blue embers still burning around where the floor opened up snatched at my skin. I barely registered the pain. The muscles in my arms burned with the exertion of holding his weight suspended below me. He grunted as he swung his other hand upward, his slick fingers darting away from my grasp.
“Damn it.”
“It’s all right,” I said, more to calm my heart. “I’ve got you.”
Javier was breathing hard, the desperate horror finding its way into his tone. “You’ve gotta kill him, Vic,” he told me. Vic, it’d definitely been Vic this time and not Nix. I heard it loud and clear, up close. My chest ached. “Whatever happens—”
“No.” I blew the hair out of my face to keep one eye on Marcus. He wouldn’t stick to the sidelines for long. “It’s you first.”
I can’t do this again. Don’t make me.
Javier’s hand swung up again, fingers reaching, and for the terrifying second that I felt thin air, my heart lurched. Then his fingers finally clung to mine against everything else—the threat of falling over the edge, the heat, the sweat forcing us to hold so tight I thought one of us would break a finger.
“Got you,” I promised.
I didn’t let go, not even when Javier’s fingers nearly lost mine again, not even as our weight shifted and my arms tried to waver. Bracing my toes on the floor behind me, there was enough leverage to help him find purchase and push himself up while I pulled. He groaned with the effort, the distant glow of Hellfire finding the sweat running the length of his nose, the sides of his jaw. Just when we’d gotten him halfway up over the ledge, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye.
With all my attention on Javier, Marcus had been an afterthought.
“Shit.”
“I got this,” Javier grunted. He let go of my hands now that I was sitting back on my knees. I reached for him again, but he grappled at the floor and heaved himself the rest of the way. “Knock him down.”
I didn’t want to leave him.
When I rose to my feet, the shadow across the room was already gone.
Marcus was gone.
Cassia yelled from behind me. “Phoenix!”
I pivoted on my heel in time to see her knock Marcus off kilter with something grasped in her hand. Something heavy that made him pitch forward a little, ribbons of murky blood spilling down in front of his eyes. A loose brick, shining with demon blood, dropped with a thump on the hardwood.
The betrayal distracted him long enough for me to flood my veins with power. I felt it building in my veins, the burnt orange embers creating rivers and tributaries up my exposed arms.
To destroy, not create.
The power threatened to burst forth—maybe I’d spontaneously combust while taking down a demon. I shoved my hands out in front of me, searching for that hellish flame inside him. Looking for a fire to put out. He staggered toward me, long arms dangling like a skeleton. A manic glint flashed in his eyes, his blood turning darker as the seconds ticked by.
I found the deadly flame that belonged only to him and burned where his soul should’ve been. It felt like the white-hot glare of an explosion. Impossible to touch, even if I was tearing it apart in a supernatural sense. Marcus must’ve sensed it, too, because he clawed at the front of his jacket and shirt, trying to locate an invisible wound neither of us could see. The heat in my hands flared bright, an impossible heat traveling up my arms. I gritted my teeth as it climbed to unbearable heights, sure that my mortal flesh would burn.
This wasn’t a house fire. This fucking hurt, and I was almost afraid of what would do to me.
But it wasn’t me who was burning out.
At least not yet.
Marcus held his hands in front of him to inspect them, his mouth agape with a scream that wouldn’t free itself from the back of his throat. I watched his fingers blacken one by one, charred as if they’d become spent matches.
A pile of gritty ash began to gather at his shoes. The blistering wind tossed my hair, the wild strands flyaway in front of my eyes. I didn’t know if the scream that finally came loose was from Marcus or me as the surge of power in my veins finally snuffed out the Hellfire.
All I knew was pain in every muscle and nerve-ending, and the wicked heat that forced its way in and the sight of us both monstrous in our own ways. Marcus’ guttural, demonic bellowing, and me, human but not completely, more ablaze with fire than flesh. I wavered under the pressure of it. My knees swayed. The fatigue began to wrestle with me, but I pushed against it, vaguely aware that my clothes were sticky and drenched. Hair was matted across my cheeks, and the corners of my eyes stung as beads of salty sweat trickled into my vision.
Marcus came apart. The sight was gruesome: his human form dissolving to black ash, revealing a glimmer of the monster I knew had always been there. It didn’t have horns and talons and a forked tongue like the myths said, but it was something ominous and shapeless with eyes that continued to scald. Until it was nothing, a scream on the wind and a few tendrils of pitch black smoke and a drifting pile of ashes the color of the abyss itself.
I collapsed onto my knees. There was pain but I couldn’t feel it anymore, my veins still glowing a golden orange with spent Hellfire. The dying inferno inside me was still hot enough that I thought my organs would immolate. I barely saw Cassia’s shoes in front of me, splattered with Marcus’ rotten blood.
“This dies with him.”
She disappeared before I could lift my head, her departure disturbing Marcus’ ashes, blowing them into the air. I was already covered in them—a film of black soot like gunpowder on my skin. I wondered just how monstrous I looked. Pain began to sidle in, every part of me trembling. I needed to move before I really started feeling it.
Baptism of Fire (Playing With Hellfire Book 1) Page 30
