Chapter 13 Torch #2
Jasmine went limp before we made it to the main road.
I felt the change the way you sense a light bulb dying, first a flicker, then the cold.
Her weight hit me hard, heavier than she looked, and I almost lost my grip on her.
For a second, I thought about letting her go.
Just one slip, and she’d be out of the game, me absolved of all responsibility, my brothers spared the embarrassment of a prospect cuddling up with a demon.
But I tightened my hold and kept walking.
She didn’t make a sound, even as the cuts on her arm kept leaking blood in thin, steady lines.
Her skin was white as printer paper, except for the brand at her shoulder: a mess of spirals and script that pulsed with mean red light, angry and hot, even through the torn silk of her dress.
I’d seen wounds like that before, back in the pit.
They didn’t heal. They just deepened until there was nothing left but the mark.
The city was empty, or maybe just smart enough to pretend it didn’t see us.
Every block was a new set of shadows, every closed storefront a potential enemy.
I kept to the alleys, avoided the main drags, cut through parking lots and under bridges.
Jasmine’s head lolled on my chest, hair sticking to the blood at her temple.
I wanted to talk to her, tell her a joke, but I didn’t think she’d hear it.
My arms started to ache, not from her weight, but from the old burns crawling up from wrist to bicep. The scars glowed faint blue, a warning that the air around us was crawling with things best left unnamed. I moved faster.
The apartment was still there, lights off, sigils intact. I got us through the door without incident, dead-bolting every lock behind me. The candles in the safe room guttered, threatened to go out, then flared when I stepped over the threshold.
I laid Jasmine on the floor, using my jacket as a pillow. She twitched, once, then went still. I checked for a pulse, found it, but it was weak—there and gone, there and gone, like a radio station on the edge of reception.
I finished the circle. Salt, then a dusting of iron filings, then a fast pass of chalk to seal the perimeter. The whole thing looked amateur hour, but it was good enough for field work. The air inside was stifling, the ozone so thick I coughed twice before I could breathe easy.
I dug a rag from the kitchen, wetted it, and cleaned the blood from Jasmine’s face. Her lips were parted, teeth clenched. The veins at her neck stood out, black and sharp. I tried to wipe away some of the soot from her arms, but it just smeared darker.
I got a better look at the brand. It had changed since the last time. The edges had crawled outward, tracing new shapes, the color gone from red to purple-black. Around the mark, the skin puckered, and beneath it, something moved—slow, deliberate, like roots burrowing.
I swore, loud enough to bounce off the walls.
She wasn’t dying from the wounds. She was being eaten, cell by cell, by whatever Lilith had left in her.
I grabbed the first aid kit and went to work. It wasn’t pretty. I patched the cuts with butterfly tape and gauze, wrapped the worst ones with duct tape, because she’d always said it worked better than anything else. I left the brand alone, though. Nothing I had could touch it.
After ten minutes, I sat back on my heels and tried to breathe. Jasmine’s chest rose and fell, but the rhythm was wrong—too shallow, too fast, a losing race.
I looked at her, really looked, and felt the old hate start to flicker. The kind you get when you realize you’re powerless, but too stubborn to give in. I pressed my palm to the floor and let the runes do their thing, hoping the circle would buy us some time.
It did, but only a little.
She woke, just for a second, eyes snapping open. They weren’t the color I remembered. Now they were black, pure black, with a tiny white dot in the middle. She saw me and tried to smile.
“You look like shit,” she whispered.
I smiled back, because what else do you do? “You should see the other guys.”
Her hand clawed for mine, found it, squeezed.
“It’s killing me,” she said.
I nodded. “I know.”
She closed her eyes. “You gotta cut it out.”
I looked at the brand, then at the knife, then back to her. “If I do, it’ll hurt.”
She laughed. “Everything hurts.”
She faded again, but didn’t let go of my hand.
I sat with her for a long time, counting the seconds, listening for the change in her breathing.
I watched the mark eat away at her, watched the color drain from her lips and the old strength in her arms melt into nothing.
I thought about my brothers, about the club, about what they’d say if they saw me now, cradling a demon, watching her die, doing everything I could to keep her here.
Eventually, I stood, checked the locks, and started prepping the next step. Hiding wouldn’t cut it. If I wanted Jasmine to live, I’d have to go after the thing that made her. I’d have to break the link, or die trying.
I wasn’t sure which was worse, but I knew I’d have to choose soon.
The air in the safe room stilled, and the candles flickered once, then burned steady.
***
Jasmine woke with a violence that nearly shattered the circle.
Her eyes snapped open, black gone to starburst violet, and she tried to roll to her side.
The effort cost her as she coughed, spat blood, then scrabbled at the floor, trying to claw herself upright.
I grabbed her by the bicep, gentler than I wanted to be, and propped her against the wall.
“Easy,” I said.
She didn’t hear me, or if she did, she ignored it. Her hands fumbled for the edge of the salt line, then hovered just above, afraid to break the barrier and invite something worse inside. The brand on her shoulder glared angry, so bright it lit the sweat on her back.
“I can’t stay here,” she managed, voice shredded raw. “You have to let me go.”
“Nope,” I said. “You’re on lockdown.”
Her head whipped toward me, hair stuck to her forehead in damp ropes. “If you don’t let me go, she’ll find you. She’ll find everyone. You don’t understand—”
I shook my head, cutting her off. “Already happening. Club’s got reports of Hell’s finest crawling through Lexington.
Fires on Fifth, four missing kids in the university district, three priests burned out of their rectories by—get this—‘unexplained electrical malfunctions.’ They’re not waiting for you. They’re hunting both of us.”
Jasmine blinked, the news hitting like a hammer. “I was supposed to keep it clean,” she said. “No witnesses. No mess. She’s burning down the city?”
“She’s burning down the world,” I said, and it sounded exactly as stupid as I felt.
Jasmine shuddered, then doubled over, dry heaving. She pressed her head to her knees, hands locked at the nape like she could throttle her own brain. “Fuck,” she whispered. “Fuck fuck fuck. This wasn’t the play. I’m not worth that.”
I crouched next to her, careful not to touch the circle. “Too late. You’re the star attraction now.”
She looked up, pupils narrowed to pinpricks. “You have to let me go,” she repeated. “I can draw them away, buy you time. She’ll kill me, but maybe it’ll reset the board.”
I almost laughed. “Are you listening? There is no board. There’s just you and me, and her. She’s not gonna settle for a quick reset. She’s gonna make an example.”
Jasmine started to shake. The brand on her shoulder crawled, lines writhing under the skin, and a thread of smoke rose from the edges.
It smelled like burning cinnamon, sweet and sharp enough to hurt my nose.
I put my hand on her shoulder, palm flat, and felt the heat bleed through.
The scars on my arm lit up, blue on red, a fireworks show for nobody’s benefit.
She flinched, then leaned into my touch.
“You’re not leaving,” I said, slow. “We end this together, or we don’t end at all.”
For a second, I thought she’d fight me. She was strong enough to break the circle, if she wanted, and we both knew it. But instead, she slumped, all the fight gone.
She let her head rest on my knee and closed her eyes. “You never give up, do you?”
I stroked her hair back, just once. “Not in the job description.”
Outside, the city howled. Even through the double-glazed windows and reinforced steel, I could hear the sirens, the distant shatter of glass, the low thump of something big moving down the avenue.
I checked my phone and found twelve new messages from Vin, all variants of get ready, it’s coming, hold your ground.
I scrolled through the reports, then held the screen up to Jasmine’s face. “See? We’re already famous.”
She squinted, then laughed. It was a broken sound, but it still counted.
“So what now?” she asked.
“We wait. We prep. And when she comes, we fight like hell.”
She grinned, teeth streaked with blood. “I always did want to go out in a blaze.”
I nodded. “We’ll make it memorable.”
The candles flickered, guttered, then flared. For a second, the shadows on the wall looked like wings—huge, black, and hungry.
Jasmine squeezed my hand, hard.
I squeezed back.
Outside, something scraped along the brick. A sound like claws, or knives. The smell of cinnamon grew stronger.
Jasmine met my eyes, and for the first time, I saw the fear was gone. Only the hunger remained.
“Ready?” I asked.
She bared her teeth, and it was beautiful.
“Ready.”