Chapter 15 Torch
Torch
Jasmine writhed on my couch like she was trying to invent a new species of snake, one that swore constantly and shed more blood than skin.
The brand on her shoulder had gone from angry-red to full thermonuclear, a palm-sized map of Hell burning through silk, epidermis, and anything else dumb enough to be in its blast radius.
The smell was barbecue, if your idea of a cookout included napalm and old pennies.
My living room was a crime scene for ancient texts.
Every surface was buried under books, crumbling Xeroxes, and rolls of grease-stained maps that traced ley lines through this city and a dozen others.
I’d run out of pushpins two hours ago. Half the wall was covered in protective sigils, the other half with maps marked “AVOID” or “DEATH TRAP” in Sharpie.
In between, the floor looked like a junkie’s living quarters: empty coffee cups, Chinese takeout cartons, and enough caffeine detritus to keep an entire precinct awake through Armageddon.
The candles were there for the ambiance, and the impromptu fire safety.
I paced between the piles, phone glued to my ear, waiting for the other side to pick up.
Vin’s voice finally crackled through, made metallic by layers of encryption and the shitty RBMC cell plan.
The Lexington chapter of the RBMC was something of an outlier.
We dealt with the shit most clubs had no idea existed.
We’d gone from running guns and strip clubs to outright battles with all things demonic.
We loved our club, our brotherhood, our bikes, women, and hunting down and killing things that go bump in the night.
Tonight’s disaster with Lilith and all the shit she destroyed would be blamed on some sort of weather phenomenon. But we knew the truth.
“You up, Torch?” Vin sounded like he was fighting sleep with one hand and a hangover with the other.
“Barely,” I said. “Update on the Sera thing?”
A pause, then a click of a lighter. “She’s en route. Kane says she’s clean, but if she tries anything, I’ve got a shotgun full of angel dust.”
I grunted, then glanced at Jasmine, who’d managed to twist the throw pillow into a noose and was alternately strangling it and her own self-esteem.
“Anything else?” I said, voice flat.
“Just that you owe me big for this,” Vin replied, a shit-eating grin audible over the static. “I mean it, Torch. If I get shotgunned by an actual demon, I want two memorial patches. And a tattoo on your ass.”
I hung up on him before he could get creative. The phone went into my pocket. I started the loop again, checking the runes, then Jasmine, and then the door.
She caught my eye, face shiny with sweat and pride. “You know, if you spent half as much energy fixing me as you do color-coding your paranoia, I’d be up and killing again by now.”
“You’d be dead,” I said, and meant it. “Or worse.”
“Ah, the tender caress of bedside manner.” She grinned, though it hurt to move her mouth. “You know, the blue candles are totally clashing with the chalk. No one’s gonna take your nerd warfare seriously if you can’t coordinate.”
I ignored her and knelt at the edge of the sofa. The brand looked bad. The edges had crawled another inch, sending black veins down her scapula and over her collarbone. When I reached out to check the temperature, she flinched so hard she nearly took my hand with her.
“Don’t,” she said, voice suddenly brittle. “Last time you touched it, I saw the ceiling come alive.”
I waited for her to relax, then did it anyway. My fingers hovered a centimeter above the skin, catching the heat, the tremble, the faint hiss that sounded like old radio static.
“It’s spreading,” I said, quiet.
She forced her face neutral, but the muscles in her jaw jumped. “Of course it is. It’s a Hellfire chain. It never stays put. It’s just… faster now.”
I leaned closer. “What did she do to you?”
Jasmine laughed, and it came out as a bark. “What didn’t she do? But you’re not talking about the fun stuff, are you?”
I shook my head.
She sat up, slow, as if moving through broken glass. Her eyes met mine, purple and rimmed with red, shot through with the kind of pain that only works when it’s real.
“Alright,” she said. “Here’s the full infomercial.
Not just the brand. There’s the soul contract I signed when she built me, the original recipe, first batch.
That’s one chain. The brand, that’s two.
And then there’s the quota. I promised a certain number of souls, on time, or I get repo’d.
That’s three. And until all three are broken, Lilith can drag me back with a single thought. ”
The words hung in the air, heavy as concrete.
I knew about the brand. The soul contract, sure, every demon had one of those. But the quota? I’d never heard her say it out loud before. I watched her hands, saw them go white-knuckled.
“How many left on the clock?” I asked.
She shrugged, as if it was trivia. “Technically? None. I hit quota last night. She wants me for the victory lap, and then it’s curtains.”
I ran a thumb down my jaw, thinking. The three chains weren’t just metaphors; they were literal, if you had the right eyes or the right kind of curse.
Breaking one was possible. Breaking all three at once?
No one had ever managed it, at least not without a mass casualty event and a citywide blackout.
I tried to keep my face blank, but she saw right through me. Jasmine always did.
“Don’t look so tragic, Torch. We had a good run. And you’re still alive, which is more than most can say after fucking with me.”
There was nothing to say. Every plan I’d made was now three steps behind the curve, and Lilith would be moving faster with every hour.
I glanced at my phone, then the clock, then the window, where the black outside was starting to thin into a sickly morning blue.
“They’ll be here soon,” I said.
Jasmine nodded, her hair plastered to her forehead. “Good. Maybe she’ll bring donuts.”
She slumped back into the cushions, hands folded over her chest, face set in that weird, stubborn way that meant she’d already made peace with her next death.
I watched the veins creep another millimeter, watched the sweat bead and fall, and told myself this wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.
But I could see it in her eyes. Jasmine knew how endings worked.
So did I.
***
The sun hadn’t made it over the horizon when the front door rattled, three sharp knocks in a pattern that screamed “cop or club.” I peeled myself off the wall, checked the peephole, and caught Kane’s shit-eating grin on the other side, Sera beside him looking like she’d stepped out of a different universe entirely.
I unlocked the deadbolt, and Kane pushed in first, boots tracking grit across my wards like he owned the place. “Hope you made coffee,” he said, and then spotted Jasmine on the couch. His voice softened a full octave: “Hey, Queen.”
Jasmine gave him a one-finger salute and tried to sit up. The brand on her shoulder flared in protest, but she forced a smile anyway.
Sera followed, and the whole apartment went cold.
She was thin, wiry, with a shock of white hair that looked spun from spiderwebs.
Her eyes were milk, no pupil or iris, just the suggestion of something watching from behind the frost. She moved through my mess like she’d already mapped every obstacle, not a single misstep. Her nose wrinkled at the coffee smell.
“Jasmine Fairchild,” she said, and her voice was all consonants—crisp, clinical. “I’ve been wanting to meet you.”
Jasmine didn’t answer. She just watched Sera with the wariness of a cat introduced to a new dog.
Kane headed for the kitchen, leaving us alone. Sera crouched at the arm of the couch, not too close. “May I?” she asked.
“Knock yourself out,” Jasmine said. “Just don’t touch.”
Sera smiled, all teeth and precision. She raised her hands, palms out, and hovered them an inch above Jasmine’s skin.
She traced the air over the wound, then along the veins that spidered from it, and then up toward Jasmine’s neck.
Her head cocked, like she was listening to a frequency only dogs and demons could hear.
“Interesting,” Sera murmured. “You’re right, it’s spreading. But the energy’s… off. Almost like there’s an echo.”
I watched her, not trusting a single gesture. “You see anything I don’t?”
She didn’t look at me, still focused on the heat radiating off Jasmine. “I see three chains. That matches your intel.” Her hand drifted to within a hair of Jasmine’s breastbone. “But one of them is frayed. Almost broken. Like someone’s been chewing on the cord.”
Jasmine snorted. “That’d be him.” She flicked her gaze at me, then back to Sera. “Blood pact. Didn’t mean to make it messy.”
Sera’s lips twitched, almost a smirk. “On the contrary, it’s the only reason you’re not dead.” She turned to me, and even without sight, her stare pinned me to the wall. “The blood bond between you two is interfering with the Hell chain. I’ve never seen a hybrid effect like this.”
I shrugged, pretending I wasn’t rattled. “Means what?”
Sera straightened, dusted off her hands. “Means we might have a shot at breaking the whole thing, if we can leverage the bond correctly. But we need to act before the third chain—the quota—finishes burning through.”
Kane wandered back in, mug of black coffee balanced in his fist. “She told me you were good, Sera. Didn’t mention you were a fucking wizard.”
Sera ignored him. She focused on Jasmine, who was now shivering, a sheen of pain sweat glossing her hairline. “I need to try something,” she said, and didn’t wait for permission.
She drew a line with her finger over the brand, then snapped her hand back. “It’s like electricity,” she muttered. “Lilith’s using you as an amplifier, not just a pawn.”
“No surprise,” Jasmine groaned. “She always said I’d make a better battery than a queen.”