Firestorm (Smoke & Ashes Book 1) Read online

  If I didn’t go blind from all that bright light today, I’d call it a success.

  I squeezed my fists tightly to make sure there was no room for the spirit to wiggle out of my fire, but the way he was moving gave me no choice but to back off. His huge head slammed onto the walls of the basement, not really caring where he’d land. Then he flew up and hit the ceiling so hard, dust and pieces of concrete fell on my lap. His head would have landed on me, too, if I hadn’t spread my legs out at the last second.

  Fuck, he was huge. Those goddamn teeth were big enough to give swords a run for their money. If I moved my hands, I’d have to break contact with my fire, but if I didn’t push myself back, he was literally going to eat me. When his jaw opened with a roar, I screamed back at him for whatever reason and directed all of my energy into pushing him back with my fire.

  It worked. I watched his head get smaller and smaller as my fire, wrapped around his body like a latex suit, pushed him farther. Eventually, I had enough space to get up.

  The witch hadn’t moved from her place at all, which was what I was hoping for. If she was the portal for this thing, taking her out of the game would mean taking the evil spirit away from here and back to whatever part of Hell he belonged in.

  At least that was the plan.

  I focused all my energy into spreading the fire wider around the spirit’s body. He continued to move, to slam himself against walls, and he was going from one side to the other like clockwork. I waited for an opening when he moved to the left, and the witch was practically right across from me.

  It was risky, but it needed to be done. Letting go of my fire with my right hand, I raised my palm toward the witch and shot a fireball, aiming it straight for her face. The fire was halfway to her when something like a blue paw with gigantic claws appeared in front of it. It wrapped around my fire and consumed it, turning it to blue light. Shit. The evil spirit had claws, too.

  I aimed both my hands at him again, but he had gotten closer now that only half my fire was containing him. I tried to step back in time, but it was no use. He was too close. Letting go of my fire, I ducked and rolled forward on the ground, my now naked arms wrapped around my head. My hoodie sleeves no longer existed.

  Holding my breath, I jumped to my feet to see how far away the spirit was and found myself surrounded by his blue light. His body, like an oversized snake’s covered in scales made of light, formed a perfect circle all around me. I looked back to see the witch, barely four feet away from me, but I couldn’t reach her. Without my fire holding it back now, the spirit’s movements were fluid, perfectly precise as he wrapped his body around me once more. He didn’t need to tell me what he planned to do with me—I knew all by myself. He was going to squeeze me to death.

  I called on my fire faster than I ever had before. It dripped from my fingers like magma and flew around me like a tornado, constantly moving, shielding me from the spirit on all sides. The smell of burnt clothes filled my nostrils. I felt the push of the evil spirit as it tried to suffocate me. My fire moved faster, the wall of it thicker with every press of blue light.

  There was one way of ending this really quickly, but I refused to go down that route. If I shifted now, there was no telling what could happen. The circumstances were bad for me to shift, to say the least, and I couldn’t risk it.

  Plan B it was. Pulling my hands in front of my chest, I gathered as much fire inside me as I could. This spirit was not going to let me out, so I had to make him. Fire bursts like the one I was about to do took most of my strength away, so I avoided them like the plague, but it was necessary now. And when I gathered enough fire, sizzling right under my skin, I pushed my arms out as fast as my body allowed me.

  My shield became one with the new wave of flames that danced out of my hands and arms and spread outward, all around me. A scream left me, so loud my own ears rang, but the roar of the spirit that followed was worse—a screeching sound, much more powerful than anything live beings were able to produce.

  My eyes opened, and there was no more light in the room. Complete darkness all around me.

  Where was the witch? I stepped to the side, touching my hoodie and my jeans to assess the damage. Yep, most of my clothes were ruined, but maybe the shirt underneath my hoodie had survived? Probably not.

  Letting go of my breath, I leaned down and rested my hands on my knees. That was very tiring, believe it or not. Pulling out my fire like that left my limbs feeling like jelly, but the good thing was, it was over. I’d have plenty of time to rest now that the witch was scorched.

  That’s what I was thinking when a blue glow shone in the middle of the room, barely a few feet behind me. I straightened and turned around, already perfectly aware of what it meant, even if my mind didn’t want to accept it yet. It just didn’t make sense. All that hellfire should have killed anything around me, especially in a closed space like this basement.

  Apparently, that wasn’t true because the blue light was shaping itself into the dragon head of the evil spirit again, growing right in front of my eyes.

  And the witch was looking right at me.

  8

  The witch had sat up, eyes wide open and conscious now as she looked at me—and smiled. How polite of her. Maybe she was a nice person when she wasn’t summoning creatures out of Hell—who knew?

  Right now, she needed to die quick. The evil spirit was growing as it slipped out of her chest, and she made it all the way to her feet before I got my body to cooperate. I reached for the half-burned holster under my hoodie. Most of my knives were now somewhere on the ground, but one of them was holding onto a thin piece of leather that wasn’t scorched. Good enough.

  “Hi, there,” I said to the witch, while her eyes moved from the evil spirit to me so fast, it was a miracle she wasn’t dizzy. “Mind standing real still for me for a second?”

  She raised her arms toward me instead, even though I had asked nicely. Maybe not so polite, after all.

  Her lips moved while she gathered whatever magic she was going to hit me with, but the connection between her and the evil spirit didn’t break. Interesting. The first time I saw her, hesitation had cost me precious seconds, and I didn’t intend to make that same mistake again. I ran for her, my knives in hand, and she must have been really confident in her ability to stop me because she didn’t move away until the last second. By then, it was too late. A bit of fire slipped from my palms and caught on the handle of my knives before it spread onto the blades. A neat little trick I’d learned early on was that if I mixed kerosene with a few other things and dipped my knives into it, they could hold my fire on their surface long enough for it to cause a lot of damage to whomever I stabbed. This was the perfect proof of how well it worked. When I stabbed the witch in the arm and my fire slipped inside her skin, she screamed at the top of her voice—the most beautiful music to my ears. My other knife, its blade on fire, was aimed at her throat, but it never got to taste her. The evil spirit wasn’t formed all the way like it had been the first time, but it was still strong enough to slam onto my side and almost knock me on my ass. I let go of the knife that was still buried in the witch. She’d have to burn her palm, too, to take it out of her because the handle was still really, really hot.

  I turned to the evil spirit, who was about half the size it had been earlier. It was trying to grow, but it couldn’t. The blue lights that outlined him were shimmering out of existence every few seconds as he tried—or the witch tried—to reshape them. Maybe my fire hadn’t killed him, but it had weakened him enough for me to finish him off.

  The witch screamed again. Oh, how I loved that sound. She screamed while she tried to get my knife out of her, but she still didn’t let go of the handle, even though it was melting her skin. Gritting her teeth, she pulled it all the way out and threw it to the floor before she turned to me. By then, I was on my way to her again, expecting the evil spirit to get in my way. He didn’t want the witch to die for obvious reasons—she made it possible for him to be here in th
e first place.

  His face, now barely half of my body in size, appeared in front of me just as my fire licked the skin of my hands. I still had it—my body could produce infinite amounts of it at any time, but it was still a mortal body and that came with limitations. My energy was all but spent, but I’d be damned if I didn’t give him the final blow and finish this thing right now.

  My fire moved lazily out of me, the flames a tiny bit colder than usual, but it wouldn’t matter. Moving back, I gave it as much time as I could to become stronger while the evil spirit slithered his way in the air toward me, jaws open, intent perfectly clear. He wanted my head as much as I wanted his.

  “May the best of us win,” I whispered under my breath, adrenaline spiking the blood in my veins once more. I raised my hands and his light paled instantly, like he was having trouble maintaining his shape altogether.

  He roared, and it was considerably less powerful than it had been last time. I was going to hit him with my fire straight in his open mouth. He was right there, barely three feet away from me now, and…

  Then he moved to the side really quick like something else had suddenly caught his attention, something more dangerous than me. He let out a screeching sound and slithered all the way to the other side of the room before he turned to the witch.

  My fire burned around my hands, the heat forcing my eyes to close almost all the way, but I could still see. I could see that the witch was no longer focused on me, but on another person who had most definitely not been there before.

  She was maybe a few inches shorter than me, pitch-black hair tied in a bun atop her head and a set of envy-worthy bangs cut straight over her eyes. Those bangs didn’t move an inch while she went from one side to the other, throwing…feathers?

  Wait. I lowered the intensity of my fire just a bit so I could see clearly. Yep, those were feathers. Big, colorful feathers, like those on the back of a peacock, and this chick was throwing them at the witch.

  She also didn’t seem to notice the evil spirit coming for her, and it was going to hit her any second now. Since my enemy’s enemy is my friend, and that witch was definitely my enemy, I released my fire at the spirit before he bit the head of the feather girl clean off.

  The heat of my fire pushed her to the side while it passed her and slammed into the spirit’s mouth. It wasn’t as powerful as it would have been if we were closer, but it did the trick. The spirit slammed against the already ruined wall of the basement. I ran to him as fast as I could, but the strangest thing—I felt a pull right toward where the feather girl was still throwing feathers at the witch.

  I knew that feeling very well. I always followed it, no matter where it led me, and it always led me to…

  Holy shit. That girl wasn’t a girl at all. She was a maggot.

  I’d have stopped and gasped properly if I’d had a second, but duty was calling—and it sounded like the roar of a really pissed off evil spirit. To my surprise, by the time I reached the other side of the room, he’d grown a bit bigger. I hit him square in the face while he snapped his jaws to show me what awaited me if I let him close enough. Great motivation for me to throw ball after ball of hellfire at him, until he made a big enough dent in the wall to fit a car in. I risked a glance behind me to see that the feather girl and the witch were still going at it: her throwing colorful feathers and the witch stopping them midair with her magic. They both moved fast, trying to avoid one another’s hits, but the evil spirit wasn’t going to give me a second to finish that witch off properly.

  He was halfway to me when I prepared to attack. That’s also the same second that lightning struck from the ceiling, its color an icy blue, much lighter than the spirit’s, and hit him right atop the head lined with spikes.

  His jaw hit the ground hard, and the lightning still buzzed with life, coming out of its head.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I mumbled to myself. I didn’t need to turn and look at the door because I already knew that lightning. It belonged to none other than Lexar Dagon’an.

  Apparently, he’d made it in time to crash my fucking party, and I wasn’t happy about it.

  The anger did me well. I ran forward, my hands still on fire, and I planned to unleash it on the evil spirit from very close up. No way could he survive that. I was going to be the one to kill that thing, damn it, especially now that Lexar was already here. Lightning crackled behind me, and I knew he was right there, but I didn’t even look at him. I reached the evil spirit, his head held against the ground by the lightning still, his strange eyes looking right at me. The reflection of my fire made his look green for a second, then he opened his jaw with a roar. Lexar’s lightning broke into a million little sparks and the spirit rose again, hovering in the air. I threw my fire at him all the same—we were still very close.

  Unfortunately, I never got to hit him. The witch screamed, and the sound might as well have been a vacuum—it sucked the spirit right back into her chest. My fire slammed onto the wall, setting it ablaze, while the evil spirit shrank and flew back, slamming into the witch’s chest. The witch had been on her knees, several feathers stuck all over her—one of them in her cheek. And when the evil spirit disappeared completely, so did she. She bent forward, still screaming, and kind of folded herself in half before she blinked out of existence, just like that.

  The echo of her scream still hung in the air a second later, or maybe it was just in my head.

  Silence.

  Behind me, the wall still burned, giving half the basement a warm orange glow. Lexar, with lightning sizzling around his arms like electricity, drenched the other half of it in icy blue.

  To my left, basically one with the wall now, was the feather girl. Her hair still looked perfectly done, even though half her face was covered in blood and the left shoulder of her blouse was torched. In her hands were two colorful feathers, and she held them like actual weapons. I couldn’t see very well, but they were feathers for fuck’s sake. How much damage could they really do?

  I reached for a knife in my holster only to remember that I didn’t have any left. I looked around for a few seconds and found one underneath the debris. They were made out of titanium, which was why they’d survive the blast.

  I raised my still warm knife her away, and my other hand toward Lexar. We were all very tense, and none of us knew what to say. So we just stared at each other for a good minute.

  “Right,” I said when the silence got to me. “What the fuck just happened?” I nodded at Feather Girl. “Why are you here, maggot?” Then I looked at Lexar. “And you? How the hell did you find this place?”

  The asshole smiled, the lightning around his ripped arms making his eyes look blue.

  “Who are you?” Feather Girl asked, pointing her feather at me. If I wasn’t so tired, I’d have probably laughed.

  “Where did the witch go? Anybody?” said Lexar, shaking his head as he looked at us, just as confused as I was.

  I pointed my knife at Lexar. “Did you attack her with your lightning?”

  “You know I didn’t,” he said. I had plenty of stuff to say to him, but it was going to have to wait.

  With a sigh, I turned to the maggot and moved closer to her. “You shouldn’t be here.” Even Lexar shouldn’t have been here at all, but he wasn’t a maggot, unfortunately for me. “I’m sending you back home now.”

  “No, no, no, wait!” she said, slamming her back to the wall once more. I didn’t wait. I kept going—knife in hand, fire so ready under my skin it almost burned me. “Wait a second!”

  “Sorry, but you have to go now. You’ve been here long enough.” I had no idea how long she’d been on Earth, but even a second would have been too long.

  “Hold on!” she screamed, raising her hands, but her feathers were no longer pointed at me. “Hold on, I can explain!”

  That made me a bit curious, I’ll admit. “Explain what exactly?”

  “That witch,” she breathed. “I can explain the witch, okay? I trusted her, and she betrayed
me. She made me into”—she looked down her body like she was seeing it for the first time—“this. It wasn’t my fault, I swear.”

  Oh, real rich. “Sorry, but I—”

  “No, wait. I can help you with her. I want to—I need to kill her, and then you can do to me whatever you want, okay? Just let me help you. Please,” she said, her small eyes full of panic. They seemed brown in color, but I wasn’t sure because it was really dark now that the fire on the wall had all but disappeared. The only light was coming from Lexar’s arms, which he’d crossed in front of him.

  Did my fire make me look that badass, I wondered?

  It totally did. More badass, in fact. Chelsea would say so. She’d have no choice because she was my best friend. So there you have it.

  “How did she betray you?” Lexar asked before I could attack the maggot, and he took a step closer. She freaked out bad and turned her feathers toward him, ready to attack.

  “Stand back!” she shouted at the top of her voice.

  Interesting.

  “I’m only asking you what she did to you,” Lexar said under his breath, and he was smiling. The kind of smile that made shivers break down people’s backs.

  “Don’t come any closer!” Feather Girl said again, and she actually didn’t sound as scared as I thought she was. She sounded…pissed. Oh, goody.

  “Now you’re being rude. It was just a question,” Lexar said, taking another step closer. I put out the fire in my hand—it was taking my energy, and I didn’t have a lot to spare right now.

  “I know who you are. I don’t trust you. Just stand back,” Feather Girl said, her eyes spitting fire Lexar’s way.

  “You know who I am, and you dare speak to me that way?” Lexar sounded extremely amused.