“Fire!” Rodrigo yelled, like it might be news to someone other than himself. His voice was drowned out by the frantic beeping of three different smoke detectors, one on each level. The Prince of Hell had stormed into his life just yesterday, and now Rodrigo’s home was an inferno to accommodate him.

He doubled back into his room and tore the comforter from his brother’s bed. Carlito wasn’t there, so hopefully he was with Raquel.

“How did this start?” Rodrigo demanded.

“I awoke only seconds before yourself.”

“So much for not needing sleep.” He left his room and ran down the hallway, baffled at how he dozed through this chaos.

“I do not, but being holed up in this body means I must abide by its limitations.”

The fire extinguisher was downstairs, under the kitchen sink. But as the dense smoke in the air assaulted Rodrigo’s lungs and sent him into a coughing fit, he decided to leave the firefighting to the firefighters. They had to be on their way by now.

He shoved open the garish pink door of Raquel’s room, then jumped back as bright orange flames exploded to life, shattering her windows and blowing out of them like from the mouth of a dragon. Thankfully, the room was empty.

“They have likely exited the building by this point. Follow suit before you get us both killed,” Resent said.

“No! I have to make sure they’re safe.”

Resent stayed quiet, but it was clear his patience was waning. At any moment, the demon might force Rodrigo to leave by taking control.

He left Raquel’s room and rushed up to his mother’s on the third floor. As he pushed open the door, exerting caution this time in fear of another backdraft, he saw them. Together, Raquel and Carlito were dragging their unconscious mother along the floor by her thick ankles. In a misguided effort to protect her from the fire, they had bundled her up in the comforter she had been sleeping under.

Rodrigo ran to them and yanked their hands off her. “I’ve got her. Get out of here!”

Carlito’s face creased into a worried frown. “Bro, I’m not sure you can lift—”

“I can. Now, go!”

Raquel pulled a hesitant Carlito out the door.

As he heard their feet stamping down the steps, Rodrigo took a knee and shook his mother as hard as he could. He figured his siblings had already tried waking her, but her being comatose was unbelievable. Had she finally gotten alcohol poisoning, or had she chosen today to upgrade to something harder? Either way, they needed to get moving.

With a grunt, Rodrigo put his mother on his back, wrapping his arms under her thighs and leaning forward slightly so she wouldn’t fall off. He reached the top of the second floor staircase before his strength gave out. Regularly climbing the hundreds of steps to the Spiral’s summit had reinforced the muscles in his legs built by fencing’s grueling footwork from his childhood, but his arms were still scrawny. And though he was slightly taller, she outweighed him by a few dozen pounds. The fire robbing him of oxygen didn’t help.

“Pitiful,” Resent said, taking over. Sprinting down the stairs quicker than Rodrigo could have empty-handed, Resent made it to the front door in seconds, then returned control.

After getting outside, Rodrigo crossed the street and nearly dropped his mother on the sidewalk as he took gulps of fresh air. There were no fire trucks in sight, and the neighbors were just coming out of their homes to gawk.

Carlito was coughing and rubbing his eyes furiously.

“When and how did this start?” Rodrigo asked Raquel.

In a hoarse voice, she said, “I just smelled it, like, two minutes ago while we were checking on Mom. Didn’t you hear us calling you?”

“How could it spread so fast?” Rodrigo asked.

“This was an assassination attempt. And our would-be executioner is on your rooftop.”

Rodrigo’s eyes shot up. There, he saw the man in the hooded trench coat from the subway. He wore that same gold mask, staring down at him and waving, as if greeting an old friend. Rodrigo took a sidelong glance at Raquel and Carlito. They were both looking at the house, yet amazingly, didn’t notice the man. Whether it was because of their panic or temporary blindness from the smoke, Rodrigo wasn’t about to mention him.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

He dug into the pocket of the jeans he had fallen asleep in, glad to find his phone there, and handed it to Raquel. “Guys, go to Mrs. Martinez’s and tell her to call 911.”

He watched them run a few houses over and start talking to a concerned Mrs. Martinez on her stoop. If nothing else, at least they were relatively safe with that tough old woman.

His attention returned to the roof. Sure enough, the man was still there. Now he was actually beckoning him over.

Rodrigo’s good sense succumbed to his rising temper, and he ran back inside his burning house. Everything around him was ablaze, yet between obstructing his vision and the tightness it caused in his chest, the smoke would be what killed him. As he was running up the stairs to the second floor, a beam of smoldering wood collapsed in front of him. He winced, feeling the heat the beam was giving off against his back as he crawled under it and continued to the third. In the hallway, the ceiling hatch was already open.

Rodrigo climbed the ladder to the roof, which, mercifully, was flat. Though the surface was hot enough it felt like the soles of his sneakers might liquefy, somehow the flames hadn’t reached this high yet. The suffocating heat had made him sweat through his shirt, so he rolled up the sleeves to his elbows, not daring to take his eyes off the man long enough to remove it.

After catching his breath, Rodrigo asked, “W-who are you and what are you doing here?”

“You can call me Flint. I’m just appreciating a beautiful fire,” the man said. Then he stretched out a gloved hand and gestured in a circular motion. The flames from the house soared upward, surrounding them and cutting off the view of any onlookers. Those creepy red eyes were evidence enough, but that settled it. This was yet another demon.

Rodrigo swallowed, his throat drier than it had ever been. “You...you killed that homeless man in the subway, didn’t you?”

Flint’s mask smothered a soft laugh. “Oh, you noticed that, huh? I thought I was rather discreet. But then, you also picked up on my presence in your house yesterday, at least briefly. Those are some keen senses you’ve got there.”

“In my house…” Rodrigo trailed off as he remembered the single squeak one empty stair gave shortly after he’d come home. “You followed me? Why? Why are you doing this?”

It was a rambling string of questions born of fear, to delay the inevitable. And from the way Flint’s stare narrowed as he stood there cocking his head, he thought so, too. When the demon pointed at his wrist, as if on a tight schedule and his victim was the one inconveniencing him, Rodrigo lost it.

He was in mid-charge, planning to tackle Flint, when Resent took over. He ducked under the hand that shot out for Rodrigo’s throat with whip-like speed and swept Flint’s feet out from under him. Before Flint could recover, Resent pinned him to the roof with his left forearm. With his right hand, he rained down punches on Flint’s mask that were so fast Rodrigo couldn’t follow them. From the thud of the blows landing, despite its sheen, the mask wasn’t steel, yet Resent couldn’t make a dent. The skin on his knuckles came away torn and bloody.

Only when Flint was about to slam a small scarlet fireball he had created into the side of Resent’s face, did he jump backward. Darker than the rest of the flames, after leaving his hand, the fireball arced through the air and smashed into the roof. It melted through the concrete and the wooden floors beneath, delving deeper until it reached the earth at the house’s foundation.

The masked demon rose and dusted himself off.

Seeing how the attack had eaten through the building, Rodrigo could only imagine the lethal damage it would do to flesh and bone. “This is crazy. He’s a living flamethrower!”

“Cease whining and be silent.”

Suddenly a black mist tinged with purple appeared in Resent’s hands. With his fingers curled like claws, he extended his left arm, overlapping at the wrist with his right. The mist launched forward with outrageous speed. “Let us see how he fares against my nebulae.”

The things Resent called nebulae counter-rotated around Flint from bottom to top, until they converged at the center, merging into a single form about ten feet tall. His eyes widened as he disappeared from sight, the twister engulfing him as it emitted a ghastly low moaning.

“Tell me you got him,” Rodrigo begged.

“Not quite.”

In a matter of seconds, fire overcame the twister and exploded outward. Through the resulting smoke, flames rippled along the roof, too fast for Resent to dodge, so the nebulae shielded him. The flames clashed with the nebulae, struggling against them for a moment. But soon enough, they burst through the prince’s defense. The impact knocked him down, smacked his head into the concrete, and sent him skidding along the rooftop.

Rodrigo was forced back into control, and the pain came rushing at him. It was the accumulation of every wound Resent had received from Flint’s last attack. Wounds, which he had somehow not felt when they were inflicted, now left him lightheaded and unable to stand.

Through the blood leaking into his eyes from his forehead, he could see Flint, unharmed, saunter over with a shrug. “He wasn’t as strong as I’d hoped.”

If this thing could beat Resent, Rodrigo didn’t have a prayer. Knowing the flames had him boxed in with no possibility of escape, he crawled for the hatch. Following this insane turn of events, retreating into the crumbling ruins of his house seemed the safest option.

Flint kicked him in the ribs and Rodrigo wheezed as he felt at least one crack. Seeing spots, he fell over onto his back and was grabbed by the throat.

“Yet, you, are nothing but a little weakling.”

As the demon applied pressure, Rodrigo futilely tried to pry his huge fingers off. Knowing he was going to die, he expected to break down in tears for the first time in years, or have his life flash before his eyes. Neither happened. Instead, he latched onto the silver lining. The assassin had been after Resent, and by extension, him. Not his brother or sister. With his death, at least they would be safe from monsters like this, and that was what was most important.

“An insect like you won’t survive the first hour of the Apocalypse,” said a second voice, quiet and feminine. She sounded so near, yet increasingly far away from Rodrigo’s fading hearing.

Then the world went dark.