Firestorm (Smoke & Ashes Book 1) Read online

  Firestorm

  Smoke and Ashes - Book 1

  D.N. Hoxa

  Contents

  Also by D.N. Hoxa

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  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Also by D.N. Hoxa

  Copyright © 2021 by D.N. Hoxa

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of

  America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material or

  artwork herein is prohibited. This is a work of fiction. Names,

  characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s

  imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons,

  living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely

  coincidental.

  Created with Vellum

  Also by D.N. Hoxa

  The New Orleans Shade Series (Completed)

  Pain Seeker

  Death Spell

  Twisted Fate

  Battle of Light

  * * *

  The New York Shade Series (Completed)

  Magic Thief

  Stolen Magic

  Immoral Magic

  Alpha Magic

  * * *

  The Marked Series (Completed)

  Blood and Fire

  Deadly Secrets

  Death Marked

  * * *

  Winter Wayne Series (Completed)

  Bone Witch

  Bone Coven

  Bone Magic

  Bone Spell

  Bone Prison

  Bone Fairy

  * * *

  Scarlet Jones Series (Completed)

  Storm Witch

  Storm Power

  Storm Legacy

  Storm Secrets

  Storm Vengeance

  Storm Dragon

  * * *

  Victoria Brigham Series (Completed)

  Wolf Witch

  Wolf Uncovered

  Wolf Unleashed

  Wolf’s Rise

  * * *

  Starlight Series (Completed)

  Assassin

  Villain

  Sinner

  Savior

  * * *

  Morta Fox Series (Completed)

  Heartbeat

  Reclaimed

  Unchanged

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  1

  Would it turn you off this story if I told you that I love freshly spilled blood and broken bones, cut off body pieces and screams of pure agony? How about brains splattered all over the ground?

  Because I love blood, broken bones, body pieces and splattered brains all over the ground. So, if that’s too much for you, it’s best if you stop reading right now.

  Seriously. Before you turn the page.

  The small eyes that looked up at me as I twisted the knife in my hand were filled with horror. What a sight to see. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

  “Come on,” I said through gritted teeth. I was a bit tired, too, to be honest. He’d proved to be stronger than I expected. His fist had been like a hammer to my gut. “Gimme something, maggot.”

  The maggot didn’t give me shit. I must have run my knife over his vocal cords again. Oh, well. There would be others to make scream soon, if past experiences were anything to go by.

  I pulled the knife out of the side of the maggot’s neck, and he fell limp to the ground like a sack of potatoes. His shirt was cleaner than my knife, so I used it to wipe the blood off the blade before I put it away in my holster. Then I stepped to the side of the almost dead body and slammed the heel of my boot onto his head with all my strength. My strength was a lot, so his skull broke on contact. Ah, the sight of rotten brains all over the ground. It just gets to me, you know? It feeds my wicked soul, as my beloved father likes to call it. Yeah, he’s even more delusional than I am.

  Soul? Me? Pfft.

  But then again, he probably is constantly high on something.

  The maggot wasn’t really a maggot. I just called them that. It came naturally to me. The truth is, they are creatures that have no place up here on the earthly plane, but they sneak out of Hell all the damn time. We’ve got a variety of them—vampires, goblins, feel-good leeches, incubi, banshees, and all kinds of nasty stuff—the result of what magic does to nature. This guy that I just killed was a memory leech. Technically, they aren’t all that different from zombies, except the part where they eat brains. These don’t really eat anything physical. What they suck out of people are memories, and if I hadn’t caught this guy whose brains now decorated the ground, he would have fed on someone’s memories and taken them for his own without an ounce of regret. It’s the only way they get to stay alive up here, where there isn’t as much magic in the air to sustain them as in Hell.

  “Sassy!” my friend called from across the street. I straightened up and turned around, running my fingers through the mess that was my hair to try to get it to cooperate a little bit. I raised my hand to tell her that I was still alive, then looked at the mess on the ground again. Maggots decompose really quickly—except vampires, who turn to ash straightaway when in contact with the sun—but people were still going to notice the remains. It was going to smell like shit for the next few days, too. Good thing I’d caught him in a parking lot. The open space would definitely help.

  For a split second, I thought about collecting the remains and dumping them in a dumpster or something, but why the hell would I do that? I’d already done a great service to the world by getting rid of this guy. I wasn’t going to do the cleaning up, too.

  Checking my clothes for splatters of blood under the lamppost at the edge of the parking lot, I made my way back to my friend. Yes, my clothes had blood on them, but that was nothing new. I was always prepared for it. That’s why I never wore anything fancy. I had an impressive collection of black shirts, like the one I had on right now, oversized hoodies, and stretch jeans. Also, my boots. It didn’t matter what time of the year it was, I did not leave my apartment without my Docs. Once broken in, you just can’t find anything better for kicking and bashing heads in.

  “You’ve got blood all over you,” Chelsea said, rolling her eyes. She didn’t mind the blood at all except for when we were out drinking. She claimed I weirded people out on sight already, and the blood made sure to keep them away altogether. She also said all that like it was a bad thing, but Chelsea wasn’t all well in the head. She knew who I was, knew where I came from, what I did, and she’d still stuck around for over four years now. Just one of the mysteries of the universe, I guess.

  “Not my fault. He started it,” I said, pointing my thumb back at the parking lot. And he did. Whenever a maggot was around me, I could feel the pull all th
e way to my bones. Ignoring it took effort I didn’t want to put in. Plus, there were only a few things in the world that I enjoyed more than killing, so…

  “You could have just left him to run around for a few hours. Nobody would have even noticed him,” Chelsea insisted. She just couldn’t bring herself to care about all those memories people would have lost to the maggot. They didn’t even need to be closer than a couple feet to latch onto people’s minds, but Chelsea didn’t care.

  And they call me heartless.

  “And miss out on seeing his skull smashed and his brains from up close? Not a chance,” I said with a grin.

  “Whatever. I don’t know why I even bother,” she said, lacing her arm in mine. She pulled me to the right, toward some of our favorite bars. We both walked crazy fast for no reason at all, so we’d get there in just a couple minutes.

  “Yes, why do you bother? In fact, why haven’t you run for the hills yet, Chelsea? Have you thought about seeing a shrink? Because you need therapy.” For hanging out with me.

  “I don’t need to pay some stranger money to tell him what’s on my mind. I can just do that with you, plus you’ll pay for the drinks.” Her snake-like smile spread on her full lips, and she showed me all her teeth. Chelsea would have been perfect—too perfect if she wasn’t a little rebel. Every line on her face was exactly right without being exaggerated, but the multiple brow rings and the tear shaped tattoo at the corner of her left eye gave an edge to her looks, making her even more striking in a slightly intimidating kind of way. Her wild golden curls against her olive skin were enough to turn people away without my blood-splattered clothes doing anything about it.

  “Why the hell would I do that?” I asked with a laugh.

  “Because I said so. Now shut up so I can tell you about last night.”

  Chelsea Englewood was about the only person in the world I would allow to tell me to shut up. Mostly because she didn’t give a shit the first five hundred times I told her not to tell me to shut up, but still. Everybody else was going to get stabbed in the eye with one of my Cutters, a.k.a. the six titanium knives I always kept with me in the holster attached to my belt, safely covered by my oversized hoodie.

  We made it to one of our favorite bars in Bella Vista, Philadelphia. It was close to the Italian Market, and the street was crowded because it was the middle of May and the weather was near perfect. But Alf’s Inn was a tiny shithole that people mostly avoided because of the exterior. It was all grey bricks with a half-broken sign over the huge, prehistoric wooden door. It had a ring smack in the middle of it, too. The inside was nice, though. It was very homey, small and not crowded. Perfect for the two of us.

  Chelsea pushed the door open without too much trouble, though it was heavy, and she was human. No paranormal blood ran in her veins—I’d double-checked, and triple-checked while making her miserable with my little tests in the past. Humans in general didn’t know about the existence of paranormal creatures, but you could find plenty of individuals who did. Like Chelsea. Because assholes like me told them all about it, instead of leaving them alone to live in blissful ignorance.

  When we walked in, we were both laughing over the ridiculous story she told me about a guy who’d pissed his pants in a presentation she and her agency had done earlier in the day. The good mood felt like it was going to follow me until the night was done.

  And then I saw his face.

  The stupidest face I had ever seen in my whole life.

  Alf’s Inn was a tight little place, with all the tables in clear view so you could see everyone as soon as you walked in. There were fourteen people in there, five of them by the bar where Manny was serving the drinks tonight, and the rest were sitting down—including him.

  “Uh-oh.” Chelsea stopped dead in her tracks, and I slammed into her back. She knew that face as well. It was the stupidest face she’d ever seen in her whole life, too.

  “Motherfucker,” I said to myself, not bothering to keep it down.

  He smiled, the Asshole, showing me his dimpled cheeks. Such a waste of perfect dimples on that stupid face.

  “Do we leave? Do we stay? What the hell do we do?” Chelsea asked under her breath, doing that thing she did where she spoke but didn’t move her lips at all.

  “Let’s just sit down,” I said, and with my eyes on Asshole, I grabbed her by the arm and pulled her inside the bar. We sat around the table closest to the door, farthest away from Asshole.

  And in case I didn’t say it enough times: Asshole.

  I never looked away from him because my self-preservation instincts were still perfectly functional. There wasn’t a single being in this entire city who could threaten me. Not one—except for him. Asshole.

  The blood in my veins was practically boiling by the time I sat down. Chelsea went to get us drinks with her head down, pretending she couldn’t see him sitting there, all by himself, looking worse than the Devil in Hell. He knew this was my city, damn it! What the hell was he doing here? The last time we saw each other was over a year ago, and even then, I hadn’t wanted to see him again for the rest of eternity.

  He held my gaze like nobody else ever could. My eyes are a bit on the strange side. They’re blue. Like, really blue—sapphire blue, hence my name. People—other than Chelsea—had trouble focusing on them for longer than a few seconds, but not Asshole. He could spend hours staring at me, just to spite me. And I could stare at him for days in return.

  His eyes were the kind of black that sucked in all the light around them. That’s why the entire area between his temples looked like a shade had fallen over it, even in the sun. He raised a thick brow, and I knew it was just to test me. I gave him no expression whatsoever.

  There were a few reasons why he’d be here, in my city, but would it be too much to hope that it didn’t involve me?

  Chelsea came back and put my drink in front of me. Whatever cocktail she’d chosen, it was going to be strong. She didn’t mess around when it came to drinking, and she knew my taste. I grabbed the glass without looking and brought it to my lips. The vodka rushed down my throat, setting me on fire.

  “Is there going to be a fight? Just tell me if there’s going to be a fight. I need to mentally prepare for it,” Chelsea said in a rush. The presence of Asshole made her more nervous than it did me. Couldn’t blame her. The last time the two of us had seen each other, we’d almost killed each other, and it was really hard to kill our kind.

  “If there is, it will be away from here,” I promised Chelsea. I did like freshly spilled blood—especially the blood of this particular creature, but there were people here, most of them human. I wasn’t going to put them in danger unnecessarily.

  As if he could read my thoughts, he turned around and looked at the people sitting at the bar. I could almost feel my cheeks flushing.

  “Why the hell is he here, Sassy? What’s going on?” Chelsea said. I didn’t need to look at her to tell that she was already red in the face and a tiny bit panicked. I could hear it all in her voice, the way it rose half an octave when she was stressed. But she didn’t need to be. I’d die before I let anything happen to her.

  “Relax,” I told my best friend. “He’s probably here on business and it has nothing to do with me. He’ll be on his way soon enough.”

  The fact that he’d been here before we arrived was a bit concerning, but I was choosing to be positive about this. No reason why he wouldn’t pick Alf’s Inn for a drink. It really was a nice place.

  “Yeah? Is that why you won’t look away from him at all? Seriously, are you even blinking?” Chelsea leaned closer on the table, and in my mind, I could picture her eyes squinting while she analyzed me. “I can’t tell.”

  I was blinking, just not as often as normal. A blink was plenty of time for Asshole to make a move, and I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of catching me unprepared.

  Also, there was an awfully long list of ugly things about him, but his face wasn’t on it. He had the kind of face you imagined the peo
ple from ancient statues and paintings had. All symmetrical and sharp and flawless. Figures that that amount of beauty would be wasted on someone like him. But life is a bitch, and she never really claimed to be fair.

  “Maybe we should just leave,” Chelsea offered, and the idea actually brought goose bumps up and down my arms. “C’mon, let’s just get going. There are other bars down the street.”

  “Fuck no.” Like hell. He was not going to chase me out of a bar in my own city, damn it. “Stay put and relax, Chelsea. He’s going to leave soon.”

  Asshole smiled. He could either hear me or read the words on my lips. I was betting on the latter considering how he was watching them move. He might have been a bit older than me, and more powerful, but if he thought I was going to run away from here with my tail tucked between my legs, he was in for a surprise.

  “Are you sure about that?” Chelsea said.

  Smiling was hard, but it had to be done, just to spite him. I spoke out loud to make sure he heard clearly this time.

  “Oh, yeah. He knows what’s good for him, I think. His brain isn’t rotten all the way. He’ll soon go very far away from here, and I hope he stays there, too.”