Firestorm (Smoke & Ashes Book 1)

by D. N. Hoxa

  “Sapphire?”

  The figure slipped from my hand. My reflexes were fast, though, so I caught it before it hit the floor.

  “Oh, dear!” Joleen cried, as if that figure had her life inside it, and if it broke, she would die. I put it back in place.

  “Sorry. I was just looking at it,” I said, feeling like a little girl again, touching things I shouldn’t be touching. God, my brain felt fried.

  I went back to the couch and sat down while Joleen ran to the console table to check her angel. Now I felt guilty, too. Hopefully I hadn’t ruined it. Holding it to the window where the sunlight streamed in, she inspected the figure in detail, and once she was satisfied, she put it back down.

  Thank God. What would she have done if I’d actually broken it? I was glad I didn’t get to find out.

  “Right, then,” she said, sitting next to me again, and she took the book on her lap. It was huge, with thick hardback covers, the brown so dark it seemed black. It looked like the inside of leather, almost exactly like the fabric of my hoodie. The book was bigger than her thighs and she barely held it together when she opened it and showed me the first page: The Curse of Mankind said the title. How nice.

  Joleen proceeded to turn the pages, white and thick like they weren’t even made out of trees, until she found what she was looking for.

  “When Adam and Eve made a home out of Earth, the angels helped by giving them what they needed to survive,” Joleen started. I’d heard this story a thousand times before, and I already told her that I was hurrying, so…

  “I’d really appreciate it if you skipped to the part about the gifts,” I said reluctantly. I wasn’t trying to be rude, but Chelsea needed me.

  “Of course,” Joleen said, and her expression didn’t change.

  That dream must have really messed with her head. She usually was quick to show when something displeased her—and my hurrying her probably did. After turning a few more pages, she cleared her throat.

  “The seven virtues to oppose the deadly sins are the most valuable gifts we have received, but none of them are physical. They can’t be buried.” She shook her head to herself then placed her hand over the book page. I couldn’t even make out the letters because of the cursive font, and I was in no hurry to get closer to her, so I stayed put. “There is only one mention of a physical gift that the angels gave to man a long time ago. It’s a legend, a myth, but according to it, angels stole it from the Heavens and gave it to the people against God’s will. All four of them were cursed and imprisoned then in a different hell from where the original Fallen landed in the beginning of time. A special hell, made just for them.”

  “And where is the thing? What is the thing they stole from Heaven?” Because if it were true, then things were really worse than we thought, just like Abraham said.

  “Nobody knows,” Joleen said, looking up at me. “It’s not real. It’s a myth. Just a story.”

  “How do you know that? It could be real.”

  “Because that’s it. That’s all it says here, and only this book mentions it. Everything else, all the real events are mentioned in every book ever written about them.”

  Damn it. I gave her another second to see if she’d say something else, something that would tell me that she was bullshitting me, but she went on to turn the page and read some more.

  I thought about it for a second. A mysterious object that angels, other than the Fallen, had actually stolen from Heaven. Yep, it definitely sounded like a story.

  “What about the Nephilim? Ever heard of those?”

  The second she looked up at me, eyes wide and lips slightly parted, I knew she had. My phoenix raised her head again, curious to hear what Joleen had to say.

  “Those are a myth, too, I’m afraid,” she said, slowly closing the book on her lap.

  “Yeah? How many books mention them?”

  She smiled. “That’s different. Angels have never mingled with humans like that. That’s the specialty of the Fallen.”

  “But it is possible, in theory. If the Fallen can have children with humans, so can angels.” Just like Lexar said, the Fallen were technically angels, too.

  She didn’t want to admit it, but she knew she had no choice. “Yes, theoretically, it would be possible.”

  “And what do the books say? What do the myths say? What kind of a power would the Nephilim have?”

  “I suppose the same as with you, the children of the Fallen. The powers of their fathers would be passed on to the children,” she said with a shrug. “I haven’t read about Nephilim very much. I don’t believe in them.”

  My nerves got the best of me because I knew that she couldn’t tell me more. I jumped to my feet, ready to get the hell out of there.

  “But you haven’t touched your tea,” Joleen complained, and it sounded genuine. Maybe she was lonely?

  Absolutely not. She couldn’t stand people. She was a loner, always had been.

  “I really have to go. I need to go see Chelsea, actually, for something important. Next time?”

  Joleen didn’t even stand from the couch to see me to the door. “Sure,” she whispered.

  “Thank you, Jo. Really, I appreciate it,” I said and opened the door to leave.

  She pressed her lips into a smile. “Any time.”

  I nodded and turned to walk out, but…

  “That dream you had. What do you think it means?” I asked despite myself. Like I said, dreams are dreams, but maybe sometimes they mean something, especially in times like this. What were the odds that Joleen had dreamed about me and angels the same day I met Abraham? It just didn’t sit well with me.

  Even though I was all the way across the room, I saw it when she turned two shades paler.

  “I’m not sure, Sapphire. But whatever it is that you’re doing, be careful. Angels are what we see when we cross to the other side, but you are already in between worlds. I doubt it means the same for you. Still, be careful. Keep your eyes open.” Slowly, her head turned toward the window as if she was seeing something outside. “Things could change at any second. Comfort is a luxury you can’t afford.”

  That was her way of saying that that dream would normally mean death, but since I was already from Hell and would end up there when I died, it meant something different for me. Bliss.

  She got one thing right, though. Comfort was definitely a luxury I couldn’t afford.

  “Thanks, Jo.” I walked out of the apartment.

  16

  No more surprises.

  That’s all I wanted. I would just go back to the apartment, find Feather Girl and Chelsea just like I left them, and everything would be fine. That’s it. Just no surprises.

  So, imagine how I felt when I opened the door, and not only was Abrah-fucking-ham sitting in Lexar’s living room, but Chelsea was sitting next to him, too.

  Awake. Eyes open, cheeks pink, breathing.

  “What the fuck.”

  It wasn’t even a question, just a comment on the ridiculous view in front of me. Feather Girl was on her way to the couch, too, holding two bottles of water in her hands.

  “Where were you?” Chelsea said, and she actually stood up. On her own feet. Her voice sounded like it always did, too, and she strode to me like she meant to kill me. Instead, she wrapped her arms around me and hugged the shit out of me.

  I felt her, felt her warmth, heard her, smelled her. She still smelled like blood, even though we’d cleaned her as best as we could—and all these thoughts were trying to take me away from the only one that mattered: Chelsea looked exactly like she normally did.

  I wrapped my arms around her, too, and hugged her until she complained that she couldn’t breathe. For a second there, everything was right with the world. The night before hadn’t happened at all. Chelsea hadn’t been attacked by shifters, hadn’t been bitten by a were-cheetah, hadn’t tried to tear her own face off. She was okay.

  But when I let go of her, and I actually looked at her, saw the barely-there red marks cri
sscrossing her face, it all came back to me with a vengeance. Bile rose up in my throat together with the phoenix that wanted to kill something as badly as I did. I swallowed hard, closing my eyes for a second to focus.

  Stand down, I told her. Just stand the fuck down.

  “Anybody wanna explain to me what the hell is going on? Because I’m freaking out, Sass. I’m freaking the fuck out,” Chelsea continued, speaking like she always did, and I almost burst out in tears. Every fiber in me wanted to believe that it had all been a bad dream, even though I could see the marks on her face, and it just made it all twice as difficult.

  “You okay? Does anything hurt? How are you feeling?” I asked her when I found my voice.

  “Yes, I’m fine. Nothing hurts, but I’ve got marks on my face, and my brow rings are gone, and my tattoo is gone, too.” She pointed at the corner of her left eye, where her tear-shaped tattoo used to be, but now wasn’t. “What the hell is going on?” Chelsea demanded, her big eyes pleading with me.

  I looked behind her, at Abraham who was standing in front of the couch, hands tucked inside his jeans, and Feather Girl, who still wasn’t sure what to do with those bottles of water.

  “What are you doing here? I thought I told you—”

  “Don’t,” Feather Girl cut me off. “He just saved both me and Chelsea. I don’t know who he is, but I’m saying thanks.” And she handed a bottle of water to Abraham.

  Holding Chelsea by the hand as if I were afraid she’d disappear somewhere, I walked closer to Abraham.

  “Who are you?” Chelsea said, then turned to me, her thumb pointing at him. “Who is he?”

  “Chelsea, Feather Girl, Abraham,” I said, just to get it out of the way.

  “It’s Abrah, actually” he informed them.

  “Yeah, I’m Annabelle,” Feather Girl said. “Thanks for that, Abrah.”

  “Thanks for what? What exactly did you do?” I took a step closer to him, and I didn’t mean to be threatening, just to prove to him that I really meant the question and that he needed to answer it asap.

  But he leaned away. “I heard screams and growls, and I came up here to see what was happening. Your friend Chelsea was in the middle of shifting, so I helped her.”

  I gave my brain a second to make sure it had gotten the right information from my ears.

  “She was having another fit,” Feather Girl said. “She was shifting, and I couldn’t stop her on my own. And then this guy came, and she stopped. Turned to human again.”

  No way could I make sense of this at the moment.

  “And now’s the perfect time for someone to tell me why the fuck I was shifting. I am not a shifter, remember? I’m human. So why the fuck was I shifting? I remember it, Sassy. I was shifting,” Chelsea repeated, over and over again. She was shifting.

  “Just a second,” I told her, then turned to Abraham again. “Mind explaining how you stopped her from shifting?”

  “I healed her. Temporarily,” the guy said, scratching the back of his head like he was suddenly very uncomfortable.

  “Heal her how? How do you…how?” Maybe he didn’t hear the urgency in my voice, but I was about to grab him by the shoulders and shake him until all the words I needed to hear fell out of his mouth.

  “All Nephilim have the gift of healing in various different forms. Mine works by cleansing the soul. The magic of the Fallen is a disease, and if it touches a person who used to be normal, I can push it back. Not forever in most cases, but I can keep it at bay for as long as I’m close enough to that person,” he explained, and he said it simply, like he was merely talking about a boring day at work.

  “Did you understand anything he said? Because he lost me at Nephilim,” Chelsea said in a whisper. Abraham smiled in turn.

  “Wait, I was human, too,” Feather Girl said before I could say anything. Or start laughing. Maybe even crying. “I was human and now I’m not. I’m”—she pointed down at her body—“this. Does that mean—”

  “I’m sorry,” Abraham cut her off. “I don’t know your story, but I don’t think I’m able to do anything. There’s no humanity left in you.”

  Ouch. The flinch in Feather Girl’s face said it all. That must have hurt.

  “What the hell is a Nephilim?” Chelsea asked, her voice high-pitched now that her panic was really starting to settle in.

  I sighed and rubbed my face. What was happening? Why couldn’t I catch a break?

  The door behind me opened, and Lexar walked in, looking like he’d just swallowed a hedgehog. Then he saw Abraham and Chelsea, and it just got worse. The shade around his eyes darkened when he looked at me, the question perfectly clear.

  “Don’t even look at me. I have no clue what the hell is going on, either.”

  “Let’s sit,” Abraham offered. “Let’s talk. It looks like we all need it. Shall we?”

  So, we sat.

  I’d love to give you a simple answer about what was really going on, even make another one of those bullet-point lists, but I can’t. Everything was extremely blurry for me still.

  Telling Chelsea what had happened was a disaster. I couldn’t find words, and when I did, my tongue kept on twisting and tying, like it wanted to keep my thoughts inside my head. Eventually, though, she heard the real story, cried for a bit, then just continued to stare at the wall, lost in thought.

  The rest of us kept talking, me mainly to get my mind off the fact that I’d ruined my best friend’s life. And also the nocturnal bitch. That, too.

  The problem was, we had no idea where she was. The bar manager Joey hadn’t been at his apartment at all when Lexar had gone to check. It had been completely empty. Then, he’d gone all the way to Hell to talk to the Fallen, and guess what? He hadn’t found any of them. Apparently, they were called to a different Circle to take care of a demon problem that had gotten out of hand. I had no idea what kind of a demon problem could get out of hand—in Hell—but until the next night, we weren’t going to be talking to the Fallen and asking them whose son was playing dirty and how the hell Nephilim were real.

  Because I believed Abraham. Really hard not to when I could see Chelsea, alive and well, not a thing different about her, except the scars on her face. The wound on her shoulder had disappeared completely. Her skin looked as flawless as ever. She felt no need to turn, no other being inside her head, like a shifter would. And since I’d already seen her half-shifted with my own eyes, the credit went to Abraham.

  The fact that Lexar and Feather Girl seemed to believe it, too, convinced me even more.

  Abraham was telling the truth, even though his truth sounded a lot like fiction.

  “We were only gifted with the power of healing and the power of light,” he said. “All of us heal in different ways, some the mind, some the body, but the power of light is the same in all of us.”

  “And what exactly is the power of light?” Feather Girl asked him.

  She’d composed herself rather quickly after being told there was nothing human about her anymore. I still felt like shit for her, which was wrong on so many levels. She was still a maggot I was going to have to kill when this was over.

  “We can produce heavenly light,” Abraham said and raised his hand, palm up. I’d seen witches do magic before, and I’d gotten a couple simple spells right myself, but this was different. A small white circle appeared out of thin air, right in the middle of his palm, and then it began to glow.

  Forget the sun. Looking at that tiny ball of light was impossible. It stabbed me right in the eyes like a knife, and even if I tried to look at it, I couldn’t. My eyelids would never allow it.

  “Fucking hell, put that thing away!” I cried, raising my hands in front of my face. I heard the asshole chuckle, but even after I opened my eyes, I still saw bright dots all around me.

  So did Feather Girl and Chelsea, if their frowns were anything to go by, but not Lexar. He didn’t look bothered at all. Or impressed. He just kept staring at Abraham, as if he wanted to peel his skin off and see what
his insides were like.

  “That’s a nice trick,” he told Abraham. “What does it expel?”

  “Darkness,” Abraham said. “Especially the darkness of magic. Evil forces are hiding everywhere, and our light reveals them, pushes them back to where they belong.”

  “Was that what you did with me? Did you use that light on me?” Chelsea said, rubbing her eyes. She was sitting on the couch with Abraham, while the rest of us sat on the floor around them.

  And it didn’t escape my attention how Abraham’s voice changed completely when he answered. “No, I used my healing on you. Don’t worry, it has no side effects. It only takes away the bad in you.”

  “Great. Thanks,” Chelsea muttered, and despite it, he smiled at her. I didn’t like that smile very much.

  “What else?” I said, just to get his attention. “What else can you do? What do you do when you’re not spying on us, and apparently hanging out outside our apartment?”

  It wasn’t technically our apartment, just Lexar’s, but they all got the point.

  “We fight against the magic of the Fallen, the only unnatural thing in the natural world,” Abraham said solemnly, as if he were reading a verse from a book.

  “So, you kill maggots,” I concluded.

  “Beg your pardon?” he said, confusing me for a second.

  “Infernals. Creatures like me,” Feather Girl informed him.

  “Yes, and other creatures, too, when they cause trouble,” Abraham said with a nod.

  “Where do you live? How many of you are there?” Lexar asked.

  “I’m coming from New York. There are five of us in the City, but there are more in the world. Maybe not as many as your kind, but a few,” Abraham said reluctantly. Every few seconds, his eyes would move to Chelsea, sitting next to him. It made me so uncomfortable.

  “Who do you answer to?” Lexar continued.

  But Abraham smiled. “I’m afraid I’ve told you all I can tell you.”

  “So, it’s a secret,” I said in wonder.

  “A very closely guarded one. We don’t reveal ourselves to anyone.”