Firestorm (Smoke & Ashes Book 1)

by D. N. Hoxa

  My jaw touched the floor.

  Lexar stepped to the side. “Ex-girlfriend.”

  “Not for long, though,” Effeyet said, giggling a devilish sound that was, of course, sexy as hell. “Who else is gonna take care of you like I did? Remember when you came back from the fight with her”—she threw me a pointed look—“who tended to your wounds?”

  I thought anger was going to punch me in the face real good, and I was cool with that. Instead, disappointment snaked its way up to my chest, paralyzing me for a second. I looked at Lexar, whose eyes had gotten even darker than usual as he stared at Effeyet. She’d been his girlfriend?

  Better yet, she’d been his girlfriend a year ago, while he was on Earth with me, flirting and making jokes someone’s boyfriend shouldn’t make with other women?

  It wasn’t fair, but it hurt. It hurt worse than the Hell I was in.

  “Knock it off, Effeyet,” Lexar said, and his voice was almost a growl.

  “You need to loosen up a bit, baby.” She stepped back. “Soon,” she whispered and blew him a kiss before she spun around to go back to her friends, her hair floating in the air like they did in Pantene commercials, laughing her heart out.

  I shouldn’t have gone there. Screw what my father would do—I should not have gone Down There.

  Baby? What the fuck? I looked at Lexar again, but there were no words to describe how betrayed I was feeling all over again. Why hadn’t he told me that he had a girlfriend when we met? He’d stood by and watched me fall for him, when he could have—

  “Sapphire.”

  I turned around to see that the first of the three doors to my side had opened. None other than my father—Azazel, in all his evil glory, was standing right in front of it.

  “Come in,” he ordered and disappeared back inside the room. I allowed myself a second to close my eyes and breathe before I followed him, heart still hammering in my chest.

  Lexar and Effeyet and my phoenix that wanted to rip me apart didn’t matter right now. It was show time.

  5

  My head was still spinning after Effeyet’s show, but I was determined to suck it up and deal. So what that Lexar had lied? I expected nothing better from him. The pain was good, anyway. Pain kept you focused—and I’ll admit, I was in need of some good ole focus now that he was actually here, right next to me. I couldn’t ignore him as well as I did when I daydreamed about it. I was a lot more badass in those dreams, unfortunately.

  But with that finished—or at least paused—I could take my attention back to my father.

  The whole earth has been corrupted through the works that were taught by Azazel: to him ascribe all sin.

  That’s what the Book of Enoch says about him. He’s basically responsible for all the fucked up shit going on in the world—and I had grown from his sperm. God must have blessed me Himself with this great honor.

  The room we were in wasn’t all that different from the outside—shiny black surfaces, two fireplaces on either sides of the gigantic desk, and lots of golden vines climbing the walls. The only difference was, there were no windows in here.

  My father stood in the middle of the room, a crisp black suit melting around his frame like a living thing. He had a black shirt on and a black satin tie that glistened just as much as his black eyes. If you looked at him, you wouldn’t give him a day over thirty-five, and he was arguably the most handsome man in existence. Everything about him was perfect—his perfectly straight nose, his thick brows with no arch that rose up at the ends toward his temples, his bright red lips that looked like they were made out of glass, his black hair sleeked back, the tips of it reaching the nape of his neck. To look at him was almost impossible—or so people tell me. The woman who raised me had never looked him directly in the face that I’d seen. Not ever. I did get why people had trouble with his perfect face and his soul-sucking eyes. What I had a problem with was his attitude, but I still kept my eyes on him, just to show him that I could.

  And his magic. It was in the air, all around him, like an aura, like a voice, constantly whispering in your ear, demanding you keep your head down and your mouth shut. I didn’t do very well with demands, and I didn’t need it to tell me just how powerful he was. He was a Fallen angel—of course he was powerful. That he chose to constantly showcase it pissed me off because he could tuck it in when he wanted to. He did when he visited me before. And while he’d seduced my mother a long time ago.

  “Were you making friends? I didn’t mean to interrupt,” he said, sarcasm lacing his every word. He hadn’t missed me at all, I could see it written all over his face. And I hadn’t missed him. What a relief.

  “Oh, yeah. Me and them are totally best friends by now. Just like me and Nevermore.” I patted Lexar on the shoulder. He stood next to me, hands locked behind him, eyes to the floor. Yeah, Lexar couldn’t look my dad in the face, either.

  The corner of my dad’s lips turned up, just slightly. That was about as far as smiling went for him.

  “It’s good to see you, Sapphire,” he said, and he actually bothered to pretend to mean it.

  “Yeah? So good that you sent Lexar to try to convince me to do your work for you and only invited me here after I said no?”

  His head leaned slightly to the side, like it always did when he was displeased. Come to think of it, he was always doing that when I was around. And I was right—he didn’t even try to deny it.

  “I’ve given you more than enough time, don’t you think? I haven’t seen you in two years,” my dad said, and he spun around, all model-like, and walked over to his desk. There were documents on it—made of white paper—and a lot of office supplies, exactly like the ones we had on Earth. Daddy looked to be really busy judging by the two piles in front of his chair, and that wasn’t all. Pieces of gray rock, each cut into perfect squares about an inch thick, sat along the side, and I knew exactly what they were for. I’d seen him send a message with them the last time I’d been here. He’d simply put his palm over the rock, and a flash later, letters had appeared on the surface, some of them still burning. He’d literally carved at least two paragraphs on rock within a single second. I’d been impressed then. I wasn’t impressed now.

  But letters and rocks weren’t what he was looking for in his desk. He leaned down, opened a drawer, and took out a wooden box. Cigars. Ugh, I hated the smell so much.

  “I know. I’ve counted each day as a blessing,” I mumbled. He pretended I hadn’t said anything.

  “It’s time we put the past behind us, Sapphire,” he said, turning toward me as he put his cigar between his lips and then tapped the tip of it with his index finger. Just once. And the thing lit up almost halfway. Showoff.

  “The past is already behind us, Daddy.” I only called him that because it pissed him off.

  “It’s time to forget and let go. It’s time for another chance,” he continued.

  Another chance. I had given him a chance once. Right after I first shifted into a phoenix, he’d come to see me every single day for two weeks. I called it the Bonding Time—which I’m pretty sure was my father’s biggest failure, even after literally being kicked out of Heaven.

  In those two weeks, he hadn’t made a single proper effort—an effort that counted. If he thought I had forgotten about that, he was dead wrong.

  “A chance? Why should I give you a chance? Nobody has ever given my mom a chance. Nobody’s ever given me one. You certainly didn’t.” He’d left, thinking that I hated his guts, and he hadn’t even cared.

  Pulling his cigar away from his lips, he looked at me, that look that said he couldn’t decide in which way to kill me yet. But I didn’t have to put up with it for long. Fallen angel or not, this guy could never look at me for longer than a few seconds.

  Still, he did know how to intimidate me, especially when he simply materialized right in front of me and looked down at me. It worked because he was a good head taller than me, and now I was feeling just like a little girl again.

  “You expected
me to fix the death of your mother your whole life,” he whispered, and he actually accused me.

  “I didn’t expect you to fix shit. I expected you to be there while I fixed myself. A chance—a real chance, that’s what I expected. And you didn’t care. So don’t lecture me now, Daddy. You get no chance from me,” I spit as angrily as I could. Yeah, so he could kill me on the spot—so what? I wished he would. Every fucking time I saw him. “Just say what you need to say because I have a life to get back to—far away from here.” And him.

  “Do you know what happens to a Fallen when he’s out of Hell?” he asked, putting all his effort into keeping his voice calm. I suspected it was for Lexar’s sake—who, by the way, wasn’t even breathing. It was easy to imagine he wasn’t there at all.

  “You get weak.” He’d told me that a thousand times before. The reason why the Fallen had to stop playing gods on Earth in the beginning was because they were running out of magical juice.

  And where does one get more magical juice, you wonder?

  Souls. That’s right—yummy, delicious souls—preferably human—and when they figured that out, the Fallen made a new game plan to stick to Hell permanently because the more souls they had in their domain, the more they controlled. Without them, they were all weak.

  Like me. I was weaker than everyone here because I didn’t live here—close to the magical juice.

  “We lose power. Power is what keeps us alive,” my father reminded me, yet again.

  “And that’s why power is more important than silly daughters who need their fathers. I get it,” I said, offering him the fakest smile I could muster. “I understand. Really—don’t sweat it. But I would really like to get the fuck out of here as soon as possible. So…the witch Nevermore was talking about?”

  Fire burned in his eyes. Like, for real. They turned all orange as he looked down at me, and I saw my whole life flashing right before my eyes. He was going to kill me. He was going to transform into a huge monster and swallow me whole. He was thinking about it. He wanted to. I wanted him to. That’s why I stood perfectly still and waited. Even my phoenix couldn’t make a single sound, but she never did when he was around. She hated him, even though I never could, and that was about the only thing I liked about her.

  “You are my blood. You belong to me, Sapphire,” he warned.

  “I do—”

  “And I belong to you.” I clamped my mouth shut. “Whether you like it or not, I am your father, and you are my daughter. I have an eternity to wait for you to see things for what they are, but what I don’t have is the patience.” He leaned even closer to me, and I tried with every bit of strength in my bones to stand still, not let him get to me, but I couldn’t. My own body took matters into hand, and I stepped back, needing some space. The air around him was laced with so much magic, I could barely breathe. “Don't test me, Sapphire.”

  “If the truth tests you, I’m going to do a lot of it every time we see each other.” My way of telling him that it was best if he just kept away from me altogether. I really hoped he got the hint.

  “Sometimes I wonder if you want me to annihilate you,” he whispered and actually looked curious. He’d never been closer to the truth. “But okay. We’ll play it your way. If more time is what you need, you will have it. But sooner or later, you’re going to accept your fate.”

  “I already have accepted my fate.” I was who I was, and no amount of wishing was going to change it. I’d just decided to do the best I could with it, while I could.

  “Your fate is to be the daughter of Azazel, and live here, in your home, by my side.”

  “This is not my home.”

  “Your blood sings when you’re here. I can hear it,” he said, turning his head to the side as if to hear my blood singing better. “It’s only a matter of time, my dearest. You will join me eventually.” Only when I die, I wanted to say, but I bit my tongue instead. What was the point? He was never going to agree with me. On anything. And the longer I kept arguing, the longer I’d have to stay here.

  Then, he did the most unusual thing he’d ever done since I met him—he touched my hair. He didn’t look me in the eyes still, but he did look at my hair between his fingers.

  “You grow more beautiful every day.”

  Maybe my ears weren’t working because that was definitely something he would never say out loud. But my cheeks flushed all the same. I had to actually remind myself that it didn’t matter what he thought of me. It just didn’t. It hadn’t in a really long time.

  “The witch,” I reminded him, clearing my throat. “That’s what I’m here for, right?”

  “Yes, the witch,” he said, stepping away from me, and his eyes met mine for a second. “She has potential to cause trouble. We have all agreed that you would be the best person for the job, considering she is in Philadelphia. You will find her, and you will kill her.” We, he said, not I. That meant the other Fallen angels knew what was going on here, too.

  “How do you even know that she has potential to cause trouble?”

  “Because the Alliance has reported her themselves. They have reason to believe she’s in possession of spells that she shouldn’t have,” he informed me, his voice lazy, like he was already tired of my shit. But I wasn’t done.

  “So why doesn’t the Alliance find her then?”

  The Witch Alliance he was talking about was the biggest witch coven in the world. Most witches and wizards around the world belonged to it, but some didn’t—like my mom. I don’t know why but she was never registered with the Alliance—I’d checked. They would normally be responsible for witches gone bad, like this nocturnal one we were here for. So why had they asked for the Fallen’s help?

  “Because they can’t. The witch was banished, and she’s been in hiding for weeks now. The witches can’t find her, so you will. That’s how we prefer it, too,” he said. That probably meant he and the other Fallen didn’t trust the Alliance. No surprise there—witches were very secretive and very isolated from the rest of the paranormal world. They didn’t play nice with other species because they believed they were superior to everybody else.

  With a sigh, I crossed my arms in front of me. “But why? Why don’t you just send your champions after her?” They had them in spades, though I had yet to see one here tonight.

  “This is not a job for champions,” he simply said.

  “And what if I can’t find her?”

  He didn’t hesitate. “Of course, you can. She’s just a witch.”

  “And I’m an earthling, remember?” I had no doubt that he’d heard the conversation I’d had with the other offspring in the waiting room—and they’d reminded me of that fact a couple times.

  “Even if you are weaker than her, you can still kill her.” He said it like it was a fact, like nobody could deny it. And it pissed me off.

  “You sound awfully sure. If even the Alliance can’t find her, that means she’s dangerous. Maybe she’ll kill me instead.” No witch was going to kill me, but still.

  “She won’t.” Again, a simple fact.

  “Well, what if I don’t want to go after the witch? What if I refuse?” I said, just to test things, to see how much room I had for negotiation. It wasn’t looking good so far, and it was about to get worse.

  For the second time, my father gave me his version of a smile, and it was as spooky as the first. A second later, the bracelet dangling around my left wrist began to heat up. Fire couldn’t burn my skin, and I knew that, but there was something about feeling heat that I wasn’t making myself that freaked me out. Especially when my father looked at me like that.

  “You know the consequences of refusing an order from me, Sapphire,” he said, and the bracelet kept on heating. It was the only thing in the world that tied me to this monster, and I couldn’t even get rid of it.

  The bracelet itself wasn’t all that special, but the red crystals chained to it were one of a kind. My father had made them especially for me to keep my phoenix in control. That damn bracelet
was the reason why I didn’t sprout wings and fly every time holding my phoenix back became impossible. It was the reason why I couldn’t say no to my father. If he took it away, if he destroyed it, I would be done for. I wasn’t delusional—my phoenix was stronger than me, and without my father’s magic holding her back, I had no hopes of surviving on Earth for long.

  “But you do want to go after the witch, don’t you?” he said after a second that lasted an eternity. The bracelet had become as hot as my fire against my skin, when suddenly, it turned ice cold. He was done reminding me. I gritted my teeth to keep from reacting. “You enjoy killing as much as I do, Sapphire. And what was the thing your mother always said to you?”

  At the mention of my mother, shivers washed down my back, but I controlled myself and did all I could not to let my facade slip.

  “Hmm…if your feet get cold, your whole body will be cold?” I blurted.

  I knew exactly what he meant, so I wasn’t surprised when he said: “The other thing.”

  “You become the people you hang out with?” The look in his eyes was murderous. It inspired me to keep on going. “How about, if you don’t clean your room right now, I’m taking away your comic books?”

  Was it too much to hope for that he would just drop this? He didn’t get to talk about my mom, damn it.

  “We’re only a decision away—”

  “Don’t.”

  It was probably the first time I’d ever interrupted him when he spoke. But it was as far as I was willing to let it go. Maybe it was my fault for telling him what my mother told me, but I’d been just a kid then. I didn’t know any better. Now, I wish I hadn’t told him shit, but it was too late.

  “All you have to do is decide that you’re going to kill her,” he continued, but I saw the way his jaw clenched for a second there. “And you will. You won’t be alone. You will be working together with Lexar.”

  “I—”

  “Together, Sapphire. The both of you. This is important,” he said, blowing the nasty smoke of his cigar to the side.