Chapter 11 Torch
Torch
Iwaited at the edge of Carlisle Carnival, where the lights had all gone dead.
No music, no barkers, not even the sickly glow of neon.
Just the metal skeletons of rides, the stink of spent electricity, and a sky too dark to promise anything but more night.
The ghost train, which usually coughed up giggling families and hormone-drunk teens, sat on its rails like a coffin with the lid nailed shut.
I leaned against one of the cars, boots planted, arms folded.
The air around me crackled, maybe from the leftover holy iron in my blood, maybe from the anticipation of what was about to happen.
I’d been standing there so long the cold had seeped through the leather, but it was the only place in town where I could guarantee privacy.
Cops wouldn’t come out here. Even the winos had better sense.
I kept my eyes on the path, the one that cut through the skeleton midway and straight up to the old ring toss.
The same path she would take, if she showed, which I wasn’t so sure about after we found her apartment trashed.
She did. I smelled her first. Jasmine stepped out from the ruins of the prize booth, shoes silent for once, hair slicked back and black as an oil spill.
She wore a jacket this time, some expensive cut that made her look more assassin than temptress, and her hands were bare.
I noticed them because they shook, just a little, as she walked.
I pushed off the ghost train, but didn’t move closer. I wanted her to feel like she had a choice.
We stared each other down for a full ten seconds. That’s how you count a duel in my line of work. Whoever blinks first loses the hand, maybe the whole game.
She won. She always did.
“I thought you’d go for the beer tent,” she said, voice low. “More your style.”
“Didn’t want to mix business with pleasure.” I watched her eyes. Violet, then a flick of crimson, then back to human. “You sure this is the place?”
She shrugged, tight and mechanical. “Figured if I was going to die, I’d do it where I first met my biggest mistake.”
She meant me. I smiled. “You call all your exes mistakes?”
“Only the ones who survive.”
She stepped closer, just enough for me to see the tremor in her jaw. The blood bond had gotten stronger since the church. I could feel it, a wire strung tight between us, tugging at the nerves behind my teeth.
“You brought backup?” she asked, glancing at the shadows. Paranoid, but not wrong.
“Only brought myself.” I let my hands hang loose, but didn’t unclench them. “Didn’t seem sporting otherwise.”
Jasmine’s lips twitched, almost a laugh. “That’s new. You never struck me as the fair play type.”
“Maybe you never looked close enough.”
We stood in silence, breathing in the dead carnival air. Her eyes never left my face. I wondered if she could feel my pulse in her own wrists.
After a minute, she said, “This is hard.”
“Talking?”
“Not lying.” She dug her nails into her palm. “You ever go centuries without telling the truth? It’s like forgetting how to walk. Now I can’t fake it, not even to myself.”
I nodded. “The bond does that. Makes liars into confessors. Sorry.”
She spat, barely missing my boot. “You’re not sorry.”
I grinned. “Not even a little.”
We circled each other, orbit tightening. The rides creaked as the wind shifted, and somewhere a piece of plastic bunting slapped itself against a pole like a flag of surrender.
I stopped first. “Why don’t you start at the beginning?”
Jasmine sighed, then squared her shoulders.
“Fine. You want the full bio? I was made, not born. Lilith took a rib from a politician, a tongue from a streetwalker, and a heart from a priest. Put them together in the Pit, left me to rot until I learned what pain tasted like. Then she taught me to make other people crave it.”
“Standard demonic upbringing,” I said, not unkind. “Go on.”
She shot me a look. “You want details? Centuries of seduction. I toppled kingdoms before you could spell your own name. I ruined saints, broke gods, and for a while, I liked it. Or thought I did.”
“What changed?”
She hesitated. I saw the struggle on her face. The blood bond forced her to answer, but her whole existence rebelled at the idea.
“Nothing,” she said, then bit the inside of her cheek, as if punishing herself for the lie. “Everything. I got bored. And then I got angry. You ever realize the only reason you exist is to amuse someone worse than you?”
“Lilith,” I said, and her whole body jerked at the name.
“She calls herself mother, but it’s not nurture. It’s just more hunger.” Jasmine’s voice went flat, defensive. “Every assignment, every soul, it was all a test. And every time I passed, she made the test harder. The last one—” She stopped, searching for the words. “The last one was you.”
I didn’t react, but she saw the truth hit me.
“You’re not a normal mark, Torch. You’re a warning shot. If I can take you, I can take anyone. That’s what Lilith told me.”
“Guess she didn’t count on the blood pact.”
“She didn’t count on me wanting something different.” Jasmine looked away, eyes shining red in the dead light. “You make it sound easy, telling the truth. But every word burns.”
I stepped closer, half a meter between us now. “Why keep going? If you’re sick of the leash, why not walk away?”
She laughed, bitter. “Because there’s no ‘away.’ There’s just more leash, or a bigger monster at the end of it.”
I understood. The club was my leash, but at least it didn’t drag me down to the pit every time I fucked up.
“Why me?” I asked, and hated how desperate it sounded.
Jasmine shook her head, frustrated. “Because you’re the only man I've ever met who makes me feel like I’m not just a weapon. Because you see the monster, and you don’t flinch. Because you want to kill me and fuck me and save me all at once, and I—” She stopped, hands shaking. “I want that, too.”
The wind picked up, scattering a handful of dried leaves across the blacktop. For a second, the silence between us was absolute.
I reached out, slow and careful, and let my hand rest on her shoulder. Her skin was ice. She didn’t pull away.
“If I could let you go,” I said, “I would.”
She leaned in, just enough for her breath to fog the air between us. “If I could kill you, I would.”
We both laughed, because there was nothing else to do.
The moment stretched, held, then snapped. Jasmine’s eyes lost their glow, and she shuddered, collapsing against me. I caught her, surprised by the weight and the warmth.
“Blood bond,” she muttered, face buried in my chest. “What a fucking mess.”
I stroked her hair, not sure who I was comforting—her, or myself.
“Tomorrow’s Halloween,” I said. “End of your contract.”
She nodded, slow. “End of everything.”
I felt the truth of it settle in my bones.
We stood there, locked together, until the sun threatened to rise. Then she pulled away, wiped her eyes, and smiled. It was shaky, but real.
“Can I ask you to do something, Torch? Something for me?”
“Shoot.”
“Will you kiss me?”
She must’ve seen the shock stamp itself across my face, because she grinned, all teeth and desperation.
I opened my mouth—habit, reflex, a defense mechanism—but she was already moving, closing the gap between us in a single, honeyed step.
Her hands slid up my chest, fingers splayed, seeking the heartbeat she’d haunted for weeks.
I let her, arms slack at my sides, because to do otherwise would have been a lie.
She tilted her head, black hair fanning across her cheek, and lifted her chin as if she was being presented for inspection, or execution. Her eyes searched mine for the barest hesitation.
There wasn’t one.
I could have gone rough. Hell, she probably expected it.
But instead I slowed everything down, savoring the anticipation, letting her feel the tension build like a gun cocked just short of the trigger.
I cupped her jaw with my palm, thumb tracing the line from ear to chin, then angled her face up toward mine.
Her lips were parted, but not in that practiced, stagey way, but more like she was bracing for a punch and hoping it would land sweet.
The air between us turned viscous, every sense tuned to the pinpoint where her mouth hovered just out of reach.
I kissed her the way you do when you know it’s the last time, and maybe the first honest one, too.
I let our mouths fit together slow, the barest pressure, my hand threading up to the back of her neck to keep her from pulling away.
She trembled against me, the shake in her arms translating through to my ribs.
Her mouth was searing, the kind of heat that made the frostbite in my veins go volcanic. I tasted her.
Jasmine melted into the kiss, her body collapsing flush to mine.
She didn’t go for the theatrics; she didn’t weaponize it.
She just… gave in. A soft gasp, chest pressed to mine, her hands gripping tight to the back of my jacket as if she let go, she’d be dragged straight to the pit.
All the centuries of performance and hunger, stripped down to this single, shivering contact.
I parted her lips. No battle, no struggle.
She let me in, let me taste the salt and the wine and the ghost of every soul she’d ever kissed before.
But it was mine now, for however long the fuse burned.
I let the pressure build, let it get desperate, until she was moving against me, hips rolling, grinding need into the space between us.
I wanted to take her right there, on the cold carnival blacktop, fuck her until the sun came up or our bones gave out, whichever broke first. I wanted to make her forget about Hell, forget about Lilith, forget about the blood pact seething in my veins.
But even then, I kept it in check, holding her jaw, kissing her deeper but slower, drawing it out until she broke first.