Chapter 17 Torch
Torch
There’s a particular kind of silence that settles on the edge of a massacre.
Not the absence of sound, but a pressurized stillness, like the world is waiting for the first brick to shatter the window.
That’s how it felt in the abandoned carnival pavilion, the air so dense with magic and fear that I couldn’t draw a full breath, even if the iron chains digging into my wrists would’ve let me.
I sat on a dais hacked out of stone and old showtime bones, iron links threaded through the eyelets of my jacket and wrapped in a figure-eight around my ribs.
They’d stripped my holster and left my shirt open just enough to expose the brand stitched into my skin, blue-gold and pulsing, a heartbeat that wasn’t always my own.
Sweat stung the cuts on my chest, every movement grinding fresh agony into my arms. But I wasn’t about to give Lilith the satisfaction of a whimper.
She paced the perimeter, her heels scoring the dais with every pass.
Her hair was a living whip, flicking sparks that burned holes in the dusk.
Her face, always more mask than flesh, was pulled tight with anticipation.
She didn’t look at me; she didn’t have to.
Every syllable of the ancient tongue rolled through the air and into the meat of my brain, the sound crawling along the bone behind my ears.
Jasmine stood at the edge of the dais, or maybe she hovered; I couldn’t tell where her feet ended and the smoke began.
Her form was half there, the rest gone to flicker and static, like an old TV refusing to tune in.
But her eyes, when they caught mine, were all the way real.
She was holding herself together through raw spite, the kind of stubbornness I recognized in every biker who’d ever tried to stare down a bullet.
The rest of the space was full of witnesses.
Carnies, demons, things that were once people and now just walked around in the shell.
They watched from the shadows, whispering in voices that left a taste of iron and rot.
Every now and then a face would twist, remembering the old way to smile, and then go slack again.
Outside, the real show had already started.
Muffled gunfire, the crash of a bike through drywall, the shout of a man who knew he was dying and planned to take a piece of Hell with him.
My brothers—RBMC, the last chapter that mattered—were making their stand.
I could feel every hit like a jolt down the chains, the shared pulse of men who’d bled for the patch and weren’t about to let a demon queen turn their home into a slaughterhouse.
I took stock. The chains were old, maybe pre-War, maybe older.
Lilith had locked them with no fewer than six hellforged padlocks, every one etched in script designed to make me doubt my own name.
But I’d learned from better than her. Sera’s incantation rattled in my head, a counter-rhythm to the one being woven around me.
I waited, jaw clenched, counting syllables and heartbeats until the moment was right.
Jasmine didn’t speak. She didn’t have to. She just shot me a look, the kind you only get from someone who’s seen you at your lowest and stuck around anyway. There was a question there, but also a dare: You ready, soldier?
I flexed my hands around the cold bite of iron. Blood slicked my palm. I nodded, once, and mouthed the first line of Sera’s incantation. It tasted like blood and salt.
Lilith froze mid-stride, as if I’d farted during a royal wedding. Her eyes snapped to me, wide and amused. “Oh?” she purred. “You’ve brought a toy.”
I spat. “Brought enough to bury you.”
She laughed, and it was the sound of glass scraping over bone. “Do you think this is your story, Daniel Clark?” She used my name like it was a slur. “You’re here to be a battery. Nothing more. Jasmine knows her role, and so should you.”
Jasmine drifted closer. The chains on my wrists glowed faint, matching the shimmer of her outline. I felt the pull—not painful, but like the first time you put your hand to a live wire and realize that current isn’t something you can ever own, just ride until it fries you or sets you free.
Lilith resumed her circuit, but this time she kept one eye on me, like a cat watching a bug that might bite back. “You don’t know what you’re doing,” she said, but the certainty was gone. She drew a symbol in the air, and every demon in the room shivered. “You never should have come back.”
I focused on the brand. It pulsed, not in time with my heart, but with Jasmine’s. The bond was a live feed—her pain, my anger, her fear, my need. I clung to it, let it drown out the babble of ancient curses rolling through the rafters.
Jasmine hovered at my side. She reached out, fingers skimming the air a centimeter above my bicep. Even through the chainmail of pain, I felt her touch, as if she was inside the same skin.
“Ready?” I whispered.
She nodded, just once, and let her hand drop. The air crackled.
Outside, a shotgun blast tore through the wall, peppering the pavilion floor with splinters and teeth. Kane’s voice, hoarse and wild, called out a challenge. For a second, every head in the room turned. I used the distraction.
I closed my eyes and let Sera’s words roll through me, not aloud, but in the marrow.
The chains tightened, then loosened. The runes flickered.
I felt the counter-spell coil up the length of my arm and pool at my chest, right under the brand.
Jasmine’s power met it halfway, a cold blue burn that hissed where it touched my own.
Lilith whipped around. “Enough!” she shrieked. The word hit with physical force. My ears rang, blood streaming from my nose. She raised both arms, and the pavilion trembled. The stones underfoot cracked; the ceiling groaned.
Jasmine shuddered, almost losing her shape, but caught herself. Her eyes locked on mine. She mouthed: Now.
I drove every ounce of will into the brand.
The blue-gold glow went nova, searing through shirt and skin and chain.
For a second, the chains turned liquid, the metal dripping down my forearms in ribbons of white-hot agony.
Jasmine pressed her hand to my chest, and her form solidified, more real than I’d ever seen her.
We spoke together, not in words, but in the joint pulse of the bond. I felt her memories—old, twisted, full of hellfire and despair—but also the new ones. The nights on the couch, the stupid jokes, the way she’d looked at me after our first fuck and pretended it was just business.
The bond amplified. It didn’t just echo pain, it rewrote it. The agony of the chains became a lever, a wedge. I used it, pried apart the lock one syllable at a time.
Lilith realized too late. She lunged for Jasmine, but the space between them doubled, then tripled, stretched by the raw force of the bond. Jasmine grabbed my hand, and together we twisted.
The chains snapped. The sound was a gunshot, loud enough to drop every demon in the room to its knees. Lilith screamed, a sound that started human and turned animal, then something far worse.
Jasmine staggered, body flickering with static, but she stayed upright. I tore the last of the chains from my arms and used the jagged end as a weapon, swinging it in a wide arc that scattered the closest carnies back toward the shadows.
Lilith retreated to the far side of the dais, eyes wide, lips peeled back in a snarl. “You can’t,” she spat. “You’re nothing. You’re mine.”
Jasmine laughed, and it was the most beautiful, broken sound I’d ever heard. “Not anymore, bitch.”
The pavilion shook. Outside, the tide was turning. The gunfire faded, replaced by the roar of engines and the chant of men who’d just realized they could win. The shadows inside recoiled, the faces in the crowd starting to crumble.
Lilith made a last grab for Jasmine. I was faster. I caught her arm, and the moment our skin touched, the brand burned through both of us, her hell-mark and my new line fusing together in a white-hot weld.
I spoke the last line of Sera’s ritual, voice raw. The light exploded, drowning the pavilion in raw, blue fire. Every demon in the room howled, hands over their faces. The crowd disintegrated, bodies burning away to nothing.
Lilith staggered, her form melting at the edges. She reached for Jasmine one last time, and then dissolved into ash.
The silence returned, heavier than before. Jasmine slumped against my shoulder, her body barely holding shape. I pulled her in, holding her tight.
“We did it,” I whispered.
She shook her head, a ghost of a smile on her lips. “Good job, soldier.”