Chapter 8 Torch
Torch
Iused to think Hell was a one-way ticket.
But after days of hunting the city’s most wanted demoness and coming up empty, I started to suspect I’d brought the place back with me, brick by smoldering brick.
My apartment, already a bunker by design, was now something closer to a panic room for the recently damned.
The windows were triple-locked and crosshatched with sigils I’d hand-inked after every close call; the doors were reinforced with enough deadbolts to make a SWAT team sweat.
Every surface—couch, fridge, TV stand, even the shitter—bore the marks of a man determined to keep the monsters out, or at least slow them down long enough for a last stand.
The club was fully aware of my penchant for safety.
Hell, the other club prospects had helped me install half the shit.
Besides, I was brought on board for this sole purpose, to hunt down and kill anything Hell decided to bring at us.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t so sure I could take Jasmine out.
How the fuck was I suppose to explain that to Vin and the club?
I fucking couldn’t and needed to figure my shit out.
Tonight, the only light came from candles.
Not out of romance, but necessity. There are some things in the dark that only real flame can push back.
I’d placed a grid of them around the perimeter, each squat glass votive guttering against the breath of some phantom draft.
Shadows played on the walls, looping through the air like they were practicing for a haunting, and I did my best to ignore them.
The desk in the corner had once been for club business, but now it was a shrine to paranoia.
On the left, a row of pistols and a half-assembled carbine.
On the right, three open notebooks and a scatter of runes, each carved from river stone and painted with blood.
Centered under the swing-arm lamp was my favorite, the battered Moleskine where I tracked every move the succubus had made since she’d hit town.
But tonight, I wasn’t updating the map. I wasn’t working through the evidence, or even dry-firing the 1911 until the slide drew blood from my palm. Instead, I was sketching her face. Again.
It started as idle therapy, a way to force the image out of my skull and onto the paper.
Now it was compulsion, a nervous tic with a body count.
I’d filled five pages already, and each attempt only made it worse.
The first couple tries were just outlines, cheekbones and the sweep of hair, lips parted in mid-threat.
But every pass, I lost time. I’d finish a line and look up to find whole minutes gone, whole candles melted to stubs.
Sometimes the air was so thick with her perfume—myrrh and burnt sugar—I’d swear she was standing in the room, breathing down my neck.
I tried to exorcise her with ink. It didn’t work.
The more I drew, the more I remembered the details: the way her eyes flickered between colors when she got excited, the delicate freckle just beneath her left earlobe, the subtle crook of her smile when she knew you were bluffing and about to lose.
The sketches improved in quality as they worsened in effect; by page six, I was shading in the hair with a focus that bordered on the erotic. Every line was a confession.
I caught myself, left hand locked in a death grip on the pencil, right hand tracing the edge of my cut like it was a rosary.
My forearms were pulsing, not just with the strain, but with the old familiar itch, the blue-white glow of Hell’s leftovers, crawling under my skin whenever I let my guard down.
It flared brightest when I thought about her.
The walls of the apartment, covered in overlapping symbols and sigils, seemed to close in.
Some of the ink was still wet, shiny against the eggshell paint.
When the paranoia got bad, I’d go over the whole place, re-inking every line, reciting the Latin and Enochian and even some old German expletives I remembered from my grandfather.
“Fuck off, you slimy bastard,” was surprisingly effective, as long as you meant it.
I set the pencil down and flexed my hands, knuckles popping loud in the silence.
The sketch on the page glared back at me, Jasmine, but not quite.
I’d gotten the lips wrong, too generous, too alive.
I erased and redrew, erased and redrew, until the tip of the pencil wore down to nothing.
I reached for the sharpener, but before I could finish, the candle nearest the door guttered and spit, flinging a bead of wax onto the tile. My heart rate ticked up.
I muttered an invocation under my breath and set the pencil aside. “Let no shadow pass,” I said, and then, for good measure, “Come at me, you bitch.”
With my free hand, I reached for the bottle of Jim Beam on the desk. The first shot tasted like charcoal and regret. The second just tasted like home.
By the time I’d finished the third, the burn had dulled the edge of the memory, but not the image.
I thumbed the page, torn between pride and self-disgust, and stared at what I’d made.
If she really was out there, if she’d really gotten into my head this deep, I was already losing.
The club had protocols for this, watch your back, double up, never let a demon mark you in ways you can’t explain with a doctor’s note. I was a walking violation.
The apartment felt too small. I stood, shoulders tight, and walked the perimeter, checking every candle, every salt line, every blood mark.
The gun went with me, a comfort and a threat both.
I swept the windows for movement, ignoring the city below, focusing only on the things that didn’t belong.
My reflection moved in the glass, hollow-eyed and lean, more predator than man.
At the end of the lap, I stopped in front of the door.
The wards there were the oldest, from the night Vin had pulled me up from the mud and told me what I was now.
They were faded, the ink run together like veins in old skin.
I traced the lines with a Sharpie, adding a fresh layer, reciting the words with more force than belief.
Every pass felt less effective. Maybe the ink was failing, maybe the magic, or maybe I just didn’t have enough of myself left to make it stick.
The knock at the door wasn’t loud, but it was enough to make me flinch.
My hand went to the gun, drawing it from the holster in a single fluid motion.
I crept to the peephole and squinted through, but all I saw was the blurry shape of a man, tall, broad, shaved down to an attitude and a cut. I knew the build. Vin.
I opened the door with the chain on, gun at my thigh. “You bring whiskey, or just bad news?”
Vin’s face split into a shark’s grin. “Can’t a brother visit without an invite?” His eyes flicked to the sketchpad on the desk, then to my glowing arms. “You’re running hot tonight. Everything copacetic?”
I grunted and let him in, sliding the chain and backing up. Vin filled the doorway like a good omen, but the smell of tobacco and fresh rain clung to him, making him seem more animal than man. He took a quick sweep of the room, cataloguing every candle, every runed stone, every weapon.
He set his helmet on the table and flopped onto the couch. “So,” he said, “tell me about the girl.”
I stayed standing, gun at my side. “Which girl?”
Vin gave me the look, the one that says you can’t bullshit a bullshitter. “The one with the death wish. The one who’s got you sketching like a lovesick schoolboy and talking to yourself at all hours.”
He reached for the bottle, took a long pull, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You wanna tell me why your wards look like they’ve been redone every hour on the hour?”
“Occupational hazard,” I said.
Vin set the bottle down, all the jokes gone from his face. “There’s another body, Torch. This one’s bad. Cops are calling it a heart attack, but the ME says the heart was dry. Like, no blood left. Like someone wrung it out and forgot to put it back.”
I felt my scars flare, burning under the sleeves. “Victim?”
“Local businessman. Real straight shooter. Family man. No priors, no enemies, no reason to be at The Pit unless he was looking for something he couldn’t get at home.” Vin paused, studied me. “You know who else was at The Pit last night?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to.
“Jasmine,” Vin said, and the name hung in the air like a curse. “She’s ramping up. Three kills in four nights, and two more that don’t seem to be counting toward her quota. She’s not playing around anymore.”
I looked at the sketch, at the face that haunted every minute of my day and night. “She’s getting cocky,” I said. “She wants me to follow.”
Vin nodded. “That’s how it feels. But there’s more.” He leaned in, voice dropping to a whisper. “Club contacts say Hell’s taking a special interest in this one. Top brass. Lilith herself is watching.”
The word made my hands go cold. Lilith. Queen bitch of Hell and first among the damned. If she was tuning in, that meant Jasmine was more than just a hungry demon. She was a project. Maybe even a candidate for promotion.
Vin saw my face and laughed, but it was a tired sound. “Don’t get your balls in a knot, Torch. You’re still the best shot we’ve got. But you gotta get ahead of it, or she’s gonna take down half the city before dawn.”
He stood, clapped a hand on my shoulder, and looked me dead in the eye. “Whatever you’re planning, make it count. We don’t get another shot at this.”
He left without another word, closing the door so quiet I almost missed it.
The apartment was silent again, save for the hiss of candlewax and the scratch of pencil on paper.
I stared at the sketch, at the face that had become my whole world, and felt something move inside me—a line blurring, a wall coming down.