Chapter 12 Jasmine/Torch
Jasmine/Torch
The elevator let me off in the private vestibule, the kind that’s supposed to scream exclusivity, but tonight it only sounded like a choke.
I stood for a second in the murk of my own reflection, seeing my hair matted, dress torn at the hip, mouth still wet from someone else’s teeth.
I waited for the customary flush of pride, that little victory lap my brain ran after a hunt.
But it wasn’t there. Just a heaviness in my chest and a faint, unscratchable itch on the back of my neck.
I slid my keycard and palmed the reinforced handle, pushing into my apartment.
Instantly, I knew something was off. Even in the dark, I could feel it, a wrongness that vibrated through the hardwood, hummed behind the drywall, infested every inch of the place like radon.
The usual notes—orange blossom, the memory of burned vodka, the sick-sweet trace of my own blood—were gone, replaced by the static thump of brimstone and a sharp, chemical heat that overpowered even the air-con.
All the hairs on my arms stood up. The urge to turn and run was strong, but that’s not how you get ahead in Hell’s org chart.
So I took a step. Then another. Each click of my heel was absorbed by the carpet, but the silence roared.
The darkness shuddered once, and then the living room lit up in seizure-bright pulses as the lights stuttered and then steadied. That’s when I saw her.
Lilith stood at the center of the room, one hand folded behind her back, the other holding a tumbler of what might have been bourbon, might have been blood.
She’d raided my closet, or maybe just improved on it—her pantsuit looked painted on, matte black with the subtle shimmer of oil, and her flame-red hair spilled down her back in a way that should have been a cliché but instead made me want to crawl under the couch and die.
Her eyes were pits of perfect crimson. You know that shade of red you see in old stoplights, the kind that makes you want to run it anyway?
That red. It pulsed in sync with the blood in my ears.
Her skin was the color of fresh snow and as unmarked as a crime scene before the first body drops.
When she looked at me, the glass in her hand didn’t so much as quiver, but the ceiling lights dimmed in fear.
I opened my mouth to offer something—an excuse, a greeting, a quick prayer—but she cut me off with a single flick of her chin.
“Sit,” she said.
I tried for nonchalance and collapsed onto the edge of the nearest couch, making sure the angle gave me two good escape routes and at least three blunt objects I could throw. Not that it would help.
Lilith smiled, slow. “Is that what you’re wearing now?” She glanced at the blood crusted across my thigh, the cinder-black singe at my shoulder where Torch’s bullet had grazed. “No wonder the assignment is taking so long.”
I smiled back, lips dry. “Comes with the territory. You wanted me?”
She tilted her head, a cat regarding a dead mouse. “Jasmine. I always want you, but rarely in this condition.”
I spread my hands, making a show of the burns and the torn fabric. “Occupational hazard. The man is more resilient than we thought.”
Lilith sipped her drink, eyes never leaving mine. “You mean, you underestimated him.”
My mouth wanted to say yes, but centuries of training said otherwise. “He’s not the problem. I’ve got him right where you want. He just likes to make it messy.”
“Does he?” Lilith took a step forward. The floor sizzled under her stiletto, a little puff of smoke curling from the groove left behind. “Funny, because what I’m seeing is that he’s making it… intimate.”
She let the word hang, heavy as wet velvet.
I tried not to blink. “I can assure you—”
Lilith closed the gap in one lazy stride, standing over me now, the heat from her skin enough to scorch my eyebrows. She leaned down until her mouth hovered just above my ear.
“You cannot assure me of anything,” she whispered, voice the texture of a knife’s edge. “You are nothing but a tool. A beautiful, exquisite tool. And you are breaking.”
Her breath was the scent of absolute judgment. My hands balled in my lap, nails cutting into my own flesh to remind me I still owned it. For now.
Lilith straightened and set her glass on my mother-of-pearl table, the sound ringing louder than any alarm. She gestured, and a slim file folder appeared in her hand, its edges blackened as if it had been toasted in a crematorium.
“Would you care to explain this?” she asked, flicking it open.
Inside was a series of blurry, desperate images.
The first showed Torch and me, mid-brawl, bodies locked.
The second was his gun at my temple, my smile not nearly as fake as it should have been.
The third showed blood. My blood, his blood, mingled on the floor of the fortune-teller’s tent.
Lilith let me sweat for exactly six heartbeats. “You made a pact,” she said, soft as a lullaby. “You let him mark you. Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”
My mouth went dry. “It’s a means to an end. He trusts me now.”
Lilith laughed. It was the worst sound in the world. “He doesn’t trust you. He wants to own you.” She plucked a photo from the folder, held it up. “And you want to be owned.”
I looked away. I could feel my face shifting, the glamour fighting to hold, but Lilith saw right through it.
She set the folder down and circled behind the couch, each step carving a crescent of black into the white marble floor. “You’re my best. You’re the only one who’s ever come close to impressing me. And now you’re embarrassing me. In front of the entire fucking Pit.”
I wanted to snap back, to tell her about the observer she’d sent, the one Torch and I had put down in the church. But her anger was the kind that demands you be smaller, quieter, less.
“You’re letting yourself feel,” she said, and for the first time, I heard the disgust in her tone. “How human of you.”
I licked my lips, tasted ash. “I’ll fix it.”
She appeared in front of me, not bothering with the normal rules of physics. One second, she was behind, the next, she had both hands on my jaw, forcing my gaze up to hers. Her nails dug in, twin pairs of red crescents slicing my skin.
“You better. Because if you don’t—” she smiled, all shark, no sugar “—I’ll show you what a real consequence looks like.”
The room darkened. The air went oven-hot. Every instinct told me to run, but her grip was iron, and her eyes bored straight through to whatever soul I had left.
Lilith’s lips grazed my ear. “You have one day. Bring me his heart, or I’ll drag you through every circle myself. Inch by inch, nerve by nerve, until you forget what mercy ever tasted like.”
And then she let go, just like that.
I hit the floor, hard. I heard the snap of a heel as she crossed to the window, looked out over the city with all the boredom of a queen inspecting her slaves. She didn’t look back.
“You’re dismissed,” she said.
I staggered to my feet, throat raw.
“Jasmine,” Lilith called, just as I reached the door.
I turned. She held up the obsidian talisman I’d given Torch, the one I’d imbued with a shard of my own essence. She rolled it in her fingers, the light catching on the runes. “Cute,” she said. “But next time, pick a side.”
She flicked it at me. I caught it on reflex, burning my palm. I bit back a scream.
Lilith smiled, satisfied, and vanished in a blossom of fire that left the windows rattling and my furniture singed.
I stood alone in the ruin of my own home, clutching the stone, wondering when the last time was that I’d genuinely been afraid. I let the feeling linger, memorized every detail, then stuffed it deep where it would never see daylight again.
One day. That’s all she gave me.
I tried to scream. Nothing came out but a thin, hoarse gasp that made my ribs shudder and my vision blur. The edges of my world shrank until the only thing that existed was the pain and the burning stink of my own skin, twisting around itself in loops of white and blue.
I wanted to shift forms, to let the demon out, but the sigil held me, clamped down like a trap. I was stuck in this shape—woman, victim, plaything—until the Queen decided otherwise. For the first time in centuries, I wondered if I might actually die.
I staggered to the bathroom, barely managing to keep my feet. The path was lined with broken glass, bits of ornamentation from Lilith’s earlier tantrum. I didn’t bother dodging them; the pain in my shoulder dwarfed everything else.
I flipped the faucet, ran cold water over my hand, then cupped it to the burn.
It hissed, a dragon’s breath, steam curling up and curling my hair into tighter tangles.
The pain doubled for a second, then subsided, leaving behind a numbness that felt like mercy.
I splashed again, and again, until the mark dulled from white to angry red.
That’s when I felt it, a second pulse, not from the wound, but from the obsidian stone at my throat.
The talisman. Torch’s. It burned against my skin, the same fire as the sigil, but deeper, more familiar.
I realized it was resonating with his pain, my pain, circling each other through whatever bond we’d made in the church.
I clutched the stone in my fist, squeezing until it left an imprint on my palm.
The urge to call him, to confess, to beg for help, rose up like bile.
I pressed it down. I was not that girl, not that demon, not that anything.
I was Jasmine fucking Fairchild, and I would not give Lilith the satisfaction.
I let the water run until my hands shook, until my knees buckled, and I sat hard on the edge of the tub, staring at the sigil as if I could will it away.
Instead, it flared—brighter, sharper, casting a shadow on the far wall.
I watched it crawl across my skin, watched the edges seep and ooze, watched the blood run in slow, perfect lines.