Firestorm (Smoke & Ashes Book 1)

by D. N. Hoxa

  But the evil spirit would live forever if we didn’t stop it here first. Its huge round mouth opened as it watched me with his weird eyes made of light, but it didn’t attack me. I waited only another second to start running again, toward Lexar and the others, because through there was the only way we were going to get to the bitch. Killing all those evil spirits might have seemed impossible right now, but it wasn’t. We were children of angels. Well, technically, Lexar and I were children of fallen angels, but I doubted that had made a difference in the amount of power our fathers had.

  There were three of us, and if we combined our forces, it could work. We could break the evil spirits like they were made out of glass, and Feather Girl would get her wish of killing the bitch, just like she came here to do.

  The plan was forming in my mind with every step I took, until I was barely ten feet away from Lexar. He turned to look at me when I stopped abruptly, like he couldn’t understand what I was doing.

  But I had to stop and listen because I heard the voice of the bitch.

  Sure enough, her eyes were open again, and her lips were moving but no longer in a whisper. She had begun to shout, and her words planted my feet firmly to the ground.

  “Come!” she shouted, her voice as loud as Lexar’s thunder, eyes to the glowing spirits over her head. “Come! Your seal is broken. Your prison no longer holds you. Come!”

  I looked at Lexar once more and found him just as confused as I felt. How many more evil spirits was she going to summon? But then…

  “I looked—and behold!” the nocturnal bitch shouted to the sky. “A white horse, and he who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer.”

  Electricity crackled between her hands as she brought her arms closer together, and something golden flashed in the air. The evil spirits roared. The were-lions roared. The sky lit up with thunder—and it wasn’t Lexar. The angels I’d seen made of flames in the bitch’s underground room came alive before my eyes. There’d been four of them, and now her words…I knew those words. I’d read those words and Joleen had recited them to me a thousand times probably. They came from the Book of Revelation, from the story of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

  “Behold!” the bitch started again, and she recited the words as if they came straight out of her rotten soul. The evil spirits grew bigger and brighter. My body was numb, and I didn’t even realize I was walking until I felt the presence of Lexar in front of me.

  “She’s calling out the horsemen,” Abraham said from somewhere nearby. I couldn’t see him—my eyes were stuck on the bitch, screaming the same words, over and over again. “Of course. It makes sense.”

  “How the hell does that make sense? There are no horsemen! I would have known!” Feather Girl cried. “She’s crazy. She’s fucking crazy! We need to do something, right now!”

  “Sassy,” Lexar said, calling my eyes to his.

  “No,” I said because I already knew what he wanted to do. Or at least I had two ideas about it—he either was going to call for the Fallen, or he was going to go after her himself. In both cases, my answer was the same.

  “Stand back,” he said, slowly turning to face the bitch, still screaming, and the evil spirits, still growing. They were right over our heads now.

  “I’m going in,” I said to Lexar. “I can stop her.”

  “No, you’re not. Stand back. This will be over soon.” But it wouldn’t.

  Or it would, and Lexar would end up dead. Like, for real. We were hard to kill, but it wasn’t impossible to end us. How in the world could I let that happen?

  I grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back. “Stop it, Lexar. I can kill her.”

  “No, you can’t. You were never even properly trained,” he said, almost angrily. “Stand back, Princess.”

  Not the right time, but God, would I kick the shit out of him if he had just a little bit more time.

  “Listen to me! I can kill her—you can’t. Just trust me, okay?” I tried to reason.

  “They will be here soon,” Lexar insisted, his dark eyes almost invisible from the shade falling over them. “Until then, I can keep her busy.”

  “You’re going to die!”

  “As long as she does, too…” His voice trailed off, and he tried to get away from me once more.

  “Lexar, for fuck’s sake, you can’t kill her! I’m a—”

  “Sassy, he might be right,” Feather Girl said reluctantly. “He’s powerful. He can take her.”

  “I think so, too. We’ll be right here, in case something goes wrong,” Abraham said. But they were fools. Neither of us could kill the bitch—but I had something that could. Someone—and she was clawing at my chest to come out right now.

  I ignored the others and grabbed Lexar’s face in my hands. I didn’t mind that I could barely hold up my right one, and that it was completely covered in blood. “Listen to me—I can kill her. There’s not time to explain, but I can. You just have to trust me for once.” He hadn’t last time, and we’d ended up almost killing each other, but now, it was different. The nocturnal bitch was still calling at the skies, and she wasn’t going to stop. And if Lexar tried, she could kill him.

  But me? That was a different story.

  Except Lexar didn’t think so. He grabbed my hands and took them off his face, then kissed my bloody knuckles. “Stand back.”

  In case you haven’t figured it out already, I don’t do very well with orders. It’s a character flaw, and I believe everybody there already expected me to do what I did, before I did it. I grabbed Lexar by the back of his shirt and pulled. Really hard. I put my back to it and stepped to the side, so Lexar flew back at least a couple of feet before he hit the ground. I wanted to tell him I was sorry, but I wasn’t, so I didn’t bother. I just turned around and ran toward the hole in the ground, my plan perfectly clear in my mind.

  The phoenix was quiet inside my chest because she knew what was coming. She knew she was coming. The feeling of giving up your own body wasn’t something I ever wanted to feel. I’d only ever done it a handful of times but never in uncontrolled situations like this. This time, I was making an exception. My chest heated as the phoenix began to burn, ready to claim what wasn’t even hers. The hole in the ground was barely two feet away from me. I was going to jump in it, and I was going to come out as—

  I stopped moving.

  Wind blew against my face, stopping me in my tracks. Not only that, but it pulled me back like a fucking magnet until it felt like my skin was going to tear off my flesh altogether. I lit the fire in my hands once more, trying to plant my feet to the ground, but my boots only slid and the wind took me higher and higher…Lexar was to my side, his eyes completely invisible, his arms raised my way as he guided the wind that held me prisoner and took me farther back.

  “Lexar!” I shouted with all my strength, my fire ready to spill out and barbecue the shit out of him. My aim wasn’t any good because of the stupid wind that wouldn’t even let me breathe properly, but I’d take my chances. The bitch was still shouting the verses, so there was a bit more time.

  But I was wrong. There was no time. Just when I thought the wind would let go of me and disappear, it pulled me once more, with twice as much strength as before. I had only a second to see Feather Girl and Abraham watching me, terrified, and three were-lions behind them, roaring at me like I was to blame for this.

  Then, the wind took me up.

  I flew. I hated flying because of my phoenix, but I hated being carried away by the wind even more. My feet didn’t touch the ground. Breathing was out of the question. My limbs moved without aim or direction, trying to find something to hold onto, but there was nothing. Lexar, the others, the evil spirits—everything became smaller and smaller the farther up I went, until finally, the wind let me go.

  I fell about three feet down and hit the ground on my side—my right side, and the arm the were-cheetah had almost bitten clean off. Pain took my breath away once more and dark
ened the view in front of me. It was all I could do not to scream my guts out, but the panic, the fear, and most importantly, my phoenix, made sure I came to my senses in record time. I was on my feet, looking down at the dry field, at the spirits, at the lions…

  “Motherfucker!” I shouted at the darkness. Lexar had dumped me atop the fucking rock. The tallest point in the entire place, and he’d just picked me up with his stupid wind and put me up there.

  Anger burned within me, hotter than my fire. My phoenix cried, demanding I fulfill my promise to let her out. I stepped onto the edge of the cliff, and even though I was way too far up, I could see Lexar’s face, could feel his eyes on me, the satisfaction that he’d managed to best me, once more.

  The air was colder up there, the sky seemed darker without the bright light of the evil spirits nearby. Everything was suspended in time, and the bitch’s shouts felt like they were coming from a world away.

  I had yet to believe it, but the nocturnal bitch was planning to actually free the four horsemen, and you don’t need me to tell you what that means. They don’t call them the four horsemen of the apocalypse for nothing.

  And even if Lexar was right, and the Fallen would get here soon, who was to say that they would even want to stop her?

  Bad shit was kind of their thing, and I was willing to bet anything that they’d find a way to control this whole mess, just like they did everything else.

  No, it was too risky. I had to put a stop to it while I still could.

  So, this time, I didn’t care about who saw. I didn’t care about who found out my secret. Chelsea, Feather Girl, a Nephilim, were-lions…Lexar. It no longer mattered.

  I stepped back and squeezed my eyes shut, pulling the bracelet from my wrist and letting it fall to the ground. I hated that damned thing as much as loved it. It was both my salvation and my prison, and to no longer feel it dangling around my wrist hurt, but it was also liberating. I was free.

  I tried to calm my nerves with a deep breath, but I failed. The phoenix writhed within me, searching for release.

  “Kill that bitch,” I whispered under my breath, and I sprinted forward.

  26

  The edge of the cliff passed me. I knew there would be no more ground beneath my feet, but I still expected to step onto something and my legs kept on moving. My stomach rolled and wanted to come right out of my mouth when my body started falling. My eyes were wide open, even though I’d intended to keep them closed. Time slowed down to a crawl no matter how much I wished for this to be over already.

  The change didn’t take longer than a split second to start. My chest felt like it was burning with a fire that could actually hurt me. My skin stretched as if it wanted to cover the entire world, or so it felt to me. Everything about me was about to change—everything, except my eyes. They remained the same, or so my father and Joleen tell me. And I kept them on Lexar, on his face filled with shock as he watched me, lightning dancing all over his body in slow motion now.

  My bones changed first, and that’s when the pain really started. No word can describe what it feels like to change so completely, to become something else entirely. Every cell in my body shifted, every vein rearranged itself, every thought in my head faded to leave way for new ones that belonged to the phoenix. It was like being cut open with a million knives, everywhere and at the same time, while you both drowned and burned, and your mind was in the control of somebody else.

  I no longer had care for the ground or if I would fall and break completely. The cliff was about two hundred feet high, anyway. I already knew I wouldn’t touch down, and it had nothing to do with the way I moved my arms now—up and down, slowly at first.

  And then I wasn’t falling anymore. It was like I was still there, trapped in that body, but not in control of it. I still felt every movement, every thought in the phoenix’s head that was also my own. I’d never tried to figure out how our connection worked when she was in charge because I already knew I didn’t want it to ever happen, but now, as time went back to its normal pace, and I flew forward, I felt every bit a firebird as I looked.

  The focus of the phoenix that directed mine was on the evil spirits, but they didn’t look the same as they had before. I could actually see their bodies, their shapes, like miniature skeletons inside each glowing monster floating in the air. The skeletons looked very human. That’s what we needed to kill—the spirit within the evil spirits. And nothing was going to stop us now.

  The wings of the phoenix were huge, and she spread them wide, taking us higher, over the evil spirits and the witch, over Lexar and the others, who had their heads up to the sky, but they were no longer focused on the blue glow. They were focused on the orange fire that burned the tips of my phoenix’s long tail feathers. I wanted to look down at them, at the talons, at everything, but the phoenix controlled my eyes now, and she was not interested in seeing herself. She was interested in killing.

  Wings spread wide by our side, the phoenix took us higher and higher, then circled in the air over the evil spirits. My fear of heights was still present, but up here, and with someone else controlling where I looked and what I saw, it was impossible to miss the beauty, the freshness of cold air with no magic infusing it, the dark sky and the stars that burned a lot brighter than I’d ever seen them before. I could see the cities all around us, building after building full of twinkling lights, roads full of cars, their lights leaving colorful trails behind as they went. The sound of the night reigning over everything, spreading its darkness in every corner, filling it with the mystery only the dark can create.

  And I was in the middle of it, a part of it now, even though I was made of fire.

  The beak of the phoenix opened, and she let out a cry—a heartbreaking, gut-wrenching cry that would make even the heartless fall to their knees and weep.

  Then her wings stopped flapping, her beak turned downward, and we dove into the evil spirit bundle headfirst.

  Air no longer bothered me. I could feel it against her beak, every one of her feathers, her body, her claws, and I could feel it when it began to heat up with magic, the closer we got to the evil spirits. Every instinct in my mind insisted I needed to close my eyes for this, but the phoenix’s eyes remained open. I could hear the thoughts in her mind, like a melody, and understand them like I’d written every key. She wanted to see this, she wanted to feel the kills, the magic, the pain. She wanted to experience it all. Her soul yearned for it.

  And so she did.

  I saw the whole thing like watching a movie from inside the screen. The evil spirit that had threatened to eat me, the one with the huge eyes and four sets of teeth in his round mouth, was the first to reach out for the phoenix. His huge mouth extended as he shot up in the sky, and the phoenix didn’t bat an eye. On the inside, I screamed, terrified of feeling those teeth in my skin, of being eaten alive, but the phoenix didn’t plan to let that happen.

  When we were inches away from the devouring mouth of the spirit, her wings wrapped tightly around her body and she began to spin around in a circle, like trying to impersonate a drill.

  Then she dove into the mouth of the evil spirit, beak first.

  There was no pain. There was no magic blast, no interruption. The phoenix went right through the glowing light of the evil spirit, and I felt the fire lighting around her body just as she went through the bundle as well. Roars and growls of agony filled my ears before complete darkness took away my vision. I looked, but there was nothing to see. The air was so cold so suddenly that half the flames on the phoenix’s body went out. We were still diving, and when she stopped us, the ghost of my stomach turning filled me with dread. Making the phoenix throw up now would be disastrous, but thankfully, she didn’t look like she intended to do that.

  Her wings spread once more, stopping us midair, and her head turned up. Up—where the light was coming from the glowing evil spirits. That’s when I realized that we’d gone into the hole underneath them. The phoenix’s beak opened, and she let out another cry,
but she didn’t fly up. It was like a call, less heart-wrenching, more terrifying—like she wanted to warn the world that the end was coming.

  Her ears caught even the smallest sounds of movement, even from the evil spirits as they all turned their monstrous faces downward. They cut the air like blades, whooshing as they went, and the bitch screamed. It didn’t sound like she was happy at all, even more so when all five of the evil spirits shot into the hole, coming for the phoenix, greed filling their glowing eyes. I could barely make out the skeletons in them as they came, illuminating the walls of the hole. The tips of the phoenix’s wings touched either end every time she flapped them—and waited. She could see the five monsters coming for her, and she wasn’t afraid, not even a tiny bit.

  Instead, she felt more alive than she ever had before.

  She cried out. The sound took the spirits by surprise, and their smooth gliding into the air halted for a split second. We must have been farther down the hole than I realized because it had taken them a good fifteen seconds to get close to us.

  That split second of hesitation was all the phoenix needed. Flapping her wings once more, she flew up, letting out another cry as the hole lit up with orange this time. Fire, hotter than I had ever felt on my skin, burned the tip of every feather on the phoenix. It nearly blinded me, but she welcomed the way it blocked everything else, except the view ahead. The evil spirits roared. The phoenix slammed into them.