Chapter 16 Jasmine/Torch
Jasmine/Torch
When it was over, we lay there in the bunker apartment, side by side on the laminate floor.
Torch’s hand was a centimeter from mine, close enough I could feel the static, not enough to risk another chemical burn.
The salt circle had been kicked apart in the rush; Sera had swept it into a tidy crescent and then stepped out for air, leaving us with the residue and the crackle of the new, raw bond lighting up the whole room like a live wire.
The first thing I noticed was the lack of pain.
The brand at my shoulder had stopped pulsing, and the black veins that had been creeping toward my spine now lay dormant, as if stunned.
I flexed my fingers and felt only the ordinary ache of someone who’d just survived a full-frontal assault from Hell’s favorite mother.
Next to me, Torch exhaled, eyelids fluttering as he checked for new wounds.
I could see the echo of my own panic bouncing around inside him.
The blood bond, so recently minted, didn’t bother with subtlety.
He rolled onto his side, studied me like I was a slow-motion car crash. “You alive?”
“Relative term,” I said. “But yeah.”
We lay there, breathing. The hum of the blood bond was like tinnitus, but for feelings. His stubbornness, my fear, his sick curiosity, my guilt. It was impossible to keep straight what belonged to who. I didn’t even try.
Sera ducked back in, her eyes doing that weird camera shutter thing as she scanned the aftermath. “Looks like you two set a land speed record for co-dependent pacts. Never saw a signature bond sync up that fast.”
Torch didn’t answer, but I felt his chest tighten with pride anyway. Or maybe that was mine. Across the room, Kane was testing the perimeter, running his palm over the sigils as if expecting the wallpaper to bite back. He looked at me and raised his chin.
“Carnival’s gone quiet,” Kane said. “But Vin’s got eyes on the midway. It’s not dead, just… coiled.”
Torch propped himself up on one elbow. “She’s waiting. That’s her play.”
Sera gave a tight, surgical smile. “Correct. Lilith will want a dramatic finale. Maximum audience.”
“Means she’s not coming for us until the last act.” Torch nodded. “Buys us a few hours.”
I sat up. The room spun, but not the usual kind. Every nerve in my body still crackled from the ritual. I could taste Torch’s aftershave, feel his old Army number ticking like an egg timer under my skin. My own thoughts were a drowning man’s limb—random, frantic, clawing for the surface.
Sera approached, crouched in front of me. “How’s the brand?”
I yanked the collar aside. The skin was smooth, a faint line the color of an old bruise. No trace of the sigil. I looked at Torch’s arm; his new black streak ran from wrist to elbow, stark against the blue-white scars.
“Looks better than it feels,” I said. “Still hurts. Different, but not gone.”
Sera shrugged. “Pain means you’re still fighting. It’ll fade if you win, or get replaced by something worse if you lose.”
“Love your optimism,” I muttered.
She stood and turned to Kane. “We should regroup at the clubhouse. Bring the rest of the boys up to speed.”
Kane grunted his agreement, already checking his phone for the latest panics. “You want us to babysit, or…?”
Sera shook her head. “This is Jasmine’s fight. And Torch’s.” She looked at me, gaze suddenly very old. “Don’t fuck it up.”
She and Kane left, the lock clicking in their wake. For a while, the apartment was silent except for the soft pop and hiss of the dying candles. I watched the blue wax puddle on the windowsill and wondered how long we had before the whole world melted down.
Torch reached for his lighter, fumbled it, then left it on the floor. “You okay?” he asked, and I knew he meant it.
I wanted to say yes. Instead, I blurted, “Why’d you do it?”
He rolled onto his back, staring at the ruined ceiling. “Because I’m tired of losing.”
I laughed, short and sharp. “That’s a shit reason.”
He looked at me, eyes wild in the candlelight. “You got a better one?”
I didn’t. But I wanted to. I wanted to say I’d do anything to keep him safe, that the brand was my burden, not his. That I was willing to go alone, if it meant he didn’t get pulled back under. Instead, I just looked at our twin marks and tried to imagine a future where we weren’t both fucked.
The silence stretched. Torch’s breathing slowed, body finally admitting to the exhaustion he’d been fighting all night.
I watched his eyelids droop, his hands relax.
When his head tipped back and his jaw went slack, I knew he was out.
Not dead, not even close, but the closest to peace he’d had in weeks.
I crawled to the kitchen, found a pen, and the only unbloodied scrap of paper I could. My hands shook so bad I had to write twice, the first draft a mess of misspellings and ink smears. The second try was better.
Torch—
Don’t follow. Lilith wants a finale, and she needs me for the fireworks. If I go alone, maybe I can end this before she drags you through again. The brand’s your curse now, too, but if I can break the chain for good, you’ll be free. Don’t wait up.
—Jasmine
I set the note by his hand, careful not to brush his skin. I packed a bag—lighter, phone, the old obsidian knife—and slung it over my shoulder. The wards at the door still glowed faintly; I stepped around them, using the gaps Sera had left like a thread through a minefield.
At the threshold, I looked back. Torch had curled on his side, one arm under his head, the other draped over his ribs. His face was softer, younger. The scars on his arm glowed in the dark, blue-white and restless. I memorized it, every line.
Then I left, closing the door on the only thing that ever made me want to stay.
The hallway smelled of cleaning fluid and ozone. I let myself out the side entrance, boots silent on the concrete, and started walking toward the one place Lilith would never expect to find me.
I walked into the dark, alone. But the bond hummed at my wrist, a low, steady drumbeat that reminded me what waited at the end of the night.
The city was quieter than it should have been at midnight, but even the rats had learned not to fuck with the path to Carlisle.
Streetlights glitched, traffic lights blinked hazard red, and every trash can along the route was slick with something black and a little too sticky to be just garbage juice.
I kept my head down, hood up, eyes fixed on the distant neon of the carnival.
The closer I got, the more the world peeled back its skin.
The banners that had once promised cotton candy and fortune telling now shivered with hidden sigils, their slogans rewritten in a script that made my retinas itch.
The parking lot was a mess of abandoned cars, most of them dusted with fine white ash that hadn’t been there an hour ago.
The ticket booth was gone, or maybe it had never existed, replaced by a roving crowd of shadows that shaped themselves into whatever face I didn’t want to see.
The main gate yawned, wide and toothy. I passed through it, and the air changed from bad to biblical.
On my left, the carousel spun slow, each horse replaced by something that had never seen a farm.
I counted wolf heads, goat skulls, and one that might have been a child’s face stretched over an engine block.
They snapped and howled as they turned, gnashing at the wind, but the ride played on, same sad calliope tune as always, just a few keys off and enough to make your gums bleed if you listened too long.
The Ferris wheel moved backward, gears grinding with every revolution.
Each car held a single passenger, but the faces were all wrong, eyes too big or mouths welded shut.
The closer you looked, the more they looked like people you’d known—teachers, lovers, that one guy you ran over with a bike in third grade and never apologized to.
They stared as I passed, mouths working like they wanted to scream but only making a whispery hiss, like air leaking from a deflating bouncy house.
Food stands had become butcher shops, the staff in paper hats but with hands stained up to the elbow. A girl in a tutu offered me a candied apple, but the “apple” twitched when she bit it, red syrup streaking her chin. I kept walking, because you don’t come to a place like this for the cuisine.
Carnies wandered the grounds in clusters, the human disguise holding until you blinked, and then the skin would slip, revealing something fanged, something scaled, or just…
extra. One tall fucker in a striped vest had three arms and used them to juggle knives, cigarettes, and a squirming cat that definitely didn’t want to be part of the act.
Nobody stopped me, but the further I got, the more their eyes tracked me, whispering in a language that made the blood in my ears fizz.
I headed for the midway, where the tents loomed large as cathedrals.
The Ten-in-One—once a hub for every scam artist, psychic, and snake charmer in the tristate—was now just the main event.
Its entrance was guarded by a pair of twins, identical right down to the burn marks on their cheeks.
They didn’t speak, just bowed low and let me through.
My feet stuck on the entry mat, which turned out to be a tangle of living worms, but I kicked free and kept moving.
Inside was heat and noise and the shimmer of a thousand tiny flames.
The room had been transformed into a throne room, Hell’s version of Versailles, only with less gold and more bone.
Ribcage chandeliers dripped fat candles.
The walls were draped with hides—some animal, some not—and the whole place smelled like old pennies and cheap perfume.
The air thrummed, heavy with the sense that someone was watching from every angle.