Chapter 14 Jasmine
Jasmine
Torch was a one-man MASH unit, and I was the only patient.
He’d scavenged the best of mortal medicine and Hell’s worst field remedies and turned his safe room into a demon ICU, all tin foil, chalk, and enough opiates to sedate an elephant.
He wouldn’t let me have any, though. Not yet.
“You gotta stay lucid,” he kept saying, as if clarity was ever my strong suit.
The room was a bomb shelter for souls on the run.
Every inch was layered with symbols like paint, ink, cheap stick-ons from party supply stores, some glowing with power, some flaking to reveal the battered drywall beneath.
The mattress he’d hauled in was set dead-center, like a sacrifice waiting for the knife.
Overhead, the naked bulb flickered, strobe-lighting the air so every time I blinked, the world reset in a fresh hell.
I lay on my side, clutching a pillow that smelled like blood and expensive whiskey.
The brand at my shoulder was the size of a palm print now, hot enough to melt ice through the skin.
It pulsed at random intervals, each one sending a jolt straight to my jaw.
I wanted to scream, but Torch had threatened to gag me with a chunk of bar soap if I woke the neighbors again.
The only thing worse than pain is boredom, and the only thing worse than boredom is having Torch hover in full triage mode, muttering to himself while he triple-checked every line and lock. He’d been at it for hours, building the fortress higher while the fire inside me grew.
“You missed a spot,” I rasped, my tongue the texture of sandpaper. “There, by the light switch.”
He didn’t even turn. “You want to draw it yourself?”
“I’m on bedrest. Doctor’s orders.”
Torch grunted, finished his Latin chant with a flourish, and slammed the salt canister down on the shelf. He turned to me, expression all dark humor and shark’s patience. “If you want to die pretty, you better start cooperating.”
I peeled my cheek off the pillow. “How’s your bedside manner with children?”
“Worse.” He checked the brand, pressed two fingers to it, and I bucked so hard I almost sent the mattress through the floor. “Looks like hell,” he said. “No surprise.”
“That’s the general theme,” I said, voice thin. “This isn’t normal. She’s pushing more through it every hour.”
Torch nodded, more thoughtful than surprised. “She wants you alive, at least for now.”
I snorted. “That makes one of us.”
He didn’t smile. “She’ll come in person once she’s sure we’re cornered. I say we use the time to set a trap.”
“Ever consider that maybe she’s setting one for you?”
He shrugged. “I like my odds better than yours.”
I almost laughed, but the next pulse from the brand turned it into a cough. Torch’s eyes tracked every twitch and flinch, but I could tell he was half-watching the door, too, waiting for the next level of disaster to walk in.
The room vibrated, a deep drone that set my teeth on edge. At first, I thought it was another psychic seizure, but then Torch’s phone buzzed on the shelf. He grabbed it without breaking eye contact.
“Vin?” He switched to speaker before the other side could get a word in. “Report.”
Vin sounded like he’d just run a marathon through a burning chemical plant. “Something’s wrong, Torch. It’s the carnival. Carlisle’s on fucking fire. Not regular fire, either. People are disappearing—literally. Booth workers, drunks, a couple of security guys. The air smells like a barbecue.”
Torch’s jaw flexed. “Containment?”
“Shit,” Vin wheezed. “What’s there to contain?
It’s like the whole fairground’s alive. Rides are moving on their own, the lights keep spelling out weird messages.
Half the time, I can’t even find the exit I just walked through.
Sera and I are holed up in the duck pond booth. She’s scared. I’m just pissed.”
Torch grunted. “Hold your ground. I’ll call you back.”
“Don’t bother,” Vin said, voice dropping to a whisper. “If you don’t hear from us in twenty, assume we’re dead. Or worse.”
The line cut. Torch pocketed the phone, then stared at me like I was the source of every bad omen in the city. Which, in fairness, I was.
“Carnival,” I managed. “That’s where she’ll do it.”
He moved to the bed, crouched until his eyes were level with mine. “What, Jasmine. What is she doing?”
I tried to focus, but the brand throbbed, white-hot, and the pain telescoped the whole world down to Torch’s face and the ugly blue glare in his eyes. I grit my teeth, let the agony ride out, and then spoke through the trembling.
“She’s using the carnival as a battery,” I said. “All those people, all that old joy and disappointment, she’s draining it to fuel a gateway. When she gets enough, she can open it wide enough for anything to come through.”
He blinked. “Hell on Earth, then.”
I grinned, lips splitting. “Don’t act so surprised. You’ve been there before.”
He stood, scanned the room as if the answer was written in the air. “If she gets the gateway open, she doesn’t need you anymore.”
“Bingo,” I said. “That’s when she’ll kill me.”
Torch’s hands were already moving, grabbing the bandolier of flares, tucking a fresh magazine into the 1911. He glanced at the wards, then at the failing seams where the paint had started to peel from the heat. “We need to move. Now.”
I tried to sit, but the pain dropped me flat again. Torch slid an arm under my shoulders, hoisting me up like I was a sack of wet towels. I didn’t complain; if I’d let him, he would’ve just thrown me over his shoulder like a fireman. Maybe I wanted that.
He made it as far as the door before the next tremor hit. The sigils on the frame went from blue to red, and then cracks split the paint like spiderwebs. The temperature shot up ten degrees. My skin prickled, and I heard the faintest whisper, almost a song, threading through the walls.
“She’s close,” I said, heart pounding. “She’s using the brand to find me. She’s using me as a goddamn bloodhound.”
Torch didn’t slow. “We’ll double back through the service tunnels, then—”
He stopped. The air behind us shimmered, and a thin line of black smoke curled from the fissures in the plaster. A finger, all white and perfect, poked through the crack. Then another.
Torch dropped me on the couch, pulled the 1911, and pointed it dead center at the wall. “You ready?” he asked, voice like ground glass.
I smiled, teeth bloody. “I was born ready.”
The wall exploded inward, showering us with debris and the scent of scorched perfume. On the other side, the city burned. And at the center of it, I saw her—the only woman I’d ever been afraid of, and the only one I’d ever wanted to kill.
Lilith stepped through the fire like it was a red carpet, eyes blazing, hair snapping behind her in a comet tail. She smiled, and for a second, I forgot about the pain, the brand, the rage. All I felt was the pull of gravity, of inevitability, of home.
Torch fired first. Three shots, all dead-on. Lilith caught them in her palm, squeezed, and let the molten lead drip to the floor. Her laugh was silk and razors.
“You always did have terrible aim, Torch,” she purred.
He chambered another round. “Still better than your maternal instincts.”
She laughed again, and the sound peeled another layer off my brain. “Oh, Jasmine. You never learn. You always pick the losing side.”
I struggled to my feet, every nerve in my body firing at once. “This isn’t about sides, Lilith. This is about endings.”
Lilith cocked her head. “So dramatic. But then, you always were my favorite.”
She reached out, and the brand at my shoulder ignited, heat radiating through the room. I screamed, but I didn’t drop. Torch grabbed my hand, squeezed until I felt the bones grind together.
Lilith’s apparition disappeared, and we knew exactly where she’d gone.
“We do this together,” Torch said.
I nodded, even as my vision blurred. “Let’s go, then. Let’s end it.”
And we stepped forward, straight into the fire.
We stumbled through the corridor, which was quickly filling with black smoke, walls glowing orange as the apartment building started to catch.
Down three flights, Torch kicking doors and howling at neighbors to get out, and then into the alley, where the air tasted less like death but more like burnt sugar.
I gasped, clawing at my shoulder, trying to dig the heat out. It was no use. I doubled over, hands on knees, and watched my shadow warp and slither across the bricks. It had horns now, and a tail. Maybe I did, too. Hard to tell.
Torch scanned the street, eyes wide and wild. “She’ll expect us to run.”
“Who said we’re running?” I spat, then regretted it as my tongue crackled in my mouth. “She wants to drag us to the carnival. We go there, we die on her stage.”
He grinned, the kind of grin that would scare a priest. “Then we fuck up the script.”
That’s why I loved him. Or maybe just liked him enough to die with him. Hard to say.
He half-dragged, half-carried me to the car—a battered Charger, reinforced steel under the candy-apple paint—and threw me in the passenger seat. His bike lay on its side, destroyed. “Buckle up,” he said, and gunned it.
The city outside was chaos. Sirens everywhere, sky bleeding red. I craned my neck to the east and saw a pillar of fire licking up from the fairgrounds, high enough to black out the moon. I felt it, too, like the world’s worst migraine, centered behind my right eye.
My phone buzzed, then rang, then died. Torch’s went the same way. “She’s cutting comms,” I said, through gritted teeth.
“Not surprised,” he replied. “I’m more interested in what you saw.”
I gripped the dashboard, fighting another wave. “She’s got the ringmaster. He’s not human anymore. She’s using him like a tuning fork, setting the whole place vibrating at Hell’s frequency.”
Torch nodded, like he’d suspected as much. “The rides?”