Chapter 18 Torch
Torch
Two weeks out from the massacre at Carlisle, and the only thing I’d managed to do right was not die.
Everything else, sleep, eating, talking to the RBMC boys without looking like I was two seconds from snapping a femur, was a work in progress.
You’d think winning would taste sweeter, but all it did was leave my teeth feeling loose.
We spent the first week after the battle hiding out at a Red Roof Inn that smelled like Raid and wet carpet, neither of us trusting the calm.
Jasmine holed up in the bathroom for hours at a time, soaking in water so hot it could strip paint.
When she emerged, her skin looked almost human.
Sometimes I caught her staring at her shoulder in the mirror, tracing where the brand had been, as if daring it to grow back. She said it didn’t hurt. She lied.
Jasmine kept saying she wanted a change of scenery.
“I feel like a potted plant,” she told me, twirling a pen in her fingers, “and you’re forgetting to water me.
” So I did the only thing that made sense.
I drove us out past the last line of exurb, past the shuttered strip malls, up where the road gets skinny and the cell service commits suicide.
The air in the Appalachians was so clean it made my lungs hurt.
The club had a patch of protected land out here—technically for “training,” but everyone knew it was for hiding out when shit got biblical.
There was an old log cabin on the property, barely bigger than a double-wide, but I’d retrofitted it with a gun safe and enough canned chili to survive nuclear winter.
Jasmine raised her eyebrows at the sight of the place. “You built me a house?” She said it like a joke, but there was an edge I hadn’t heard before.
“Don’t get any ideas. It’s not even wired for TV.”
“Perfect. Maybe I can finally get some work done.” She winked at me, then let herself in, boots crunching on the gravel.
The inside was dark, cool, and smelled like dry pine and old smoke.
I flicked the generator switch, and the lights popped on with a reluctant whine.
Jasmine made a slow circuit of the place, running her hands over the rough-hewn furniture, pausing to examine the knife marks in the kitchen counter and the three empty bourbon bottles lined up on the windowsill.
She stopped at the main beam, just above the entryway. “You’re so sentimental, Torch. Did you carve these for me?”
The runes were faint, but the eye adjusted. A line of Enochian sigils, then two more sets in Latin and something older—wards, protective circles, anti-possession stuff you can’t buy at Home Depot.
“Standard protocol,” I said, a little defensive.
She smiled, teeth white and perfect, but the dimple in her left cheek betrayed her. “You’re cute when you’re paranoid.” She turned and caught me staring, so I looked away and started dumping gear on the table.
The brand on my arm was behaving, but every so often it would pulse, a sharp tug like someone yanking my blood vessels from the inside.
Jasmine’s brand was almost gone, but she kept rubbing the skin as if it was itching beneath the surface.
When we got close, the air between us would spark, a fizzing static that was somewhere between erotic and flu symptoms.
I cleared my throat. “You hungry?”
She snorted. “Is that your idea of foreplay?”
“I mean it. There’s Spam, ramen, and whatever’s in the freezer. Not fancy, but—”
“Sold,” she said, kicking off her boots. She padded barefoot across the floor, toes painted black and chipped. “Show me your pantry, mountain man.”
I opened the fridge and she leaned in, examining the shelves like she was making a point. “No blood. You’re slipping.”
“Didn’t want to tempt you.”
She laughed, then straightened, closer than I expected.
Her hair, freshly dyed from blue-black to something near the color of midnight, smelled faintly like chlorine and tobacco.
She wore one of my old flannel shirts, which on her looked like a dress.
She caught me staring again, and this time she held the look, waiting.
I lost the staring contest. “I’m going to build a fire,” I said. “Storm’s rolling in tonight.”
She trailed after me, a few paces back, until I started stacking logs in the wood stove. She folded onto the old couch, legs tucked under her, hands worrying the hem of the shirt. “So,” she said, “what now?”
I shrugged. “I haven’t thought that far ahead.”
She cocked her head. “You mean you don’t have a post-apocalypse five-year plan?”
“Never figured I’d last this long.”
She chewed on that for a minute, gaze going distant. I fumbled with the kindling, trying not to look like a moron. After a while she said, “You ever think about just running away? Like, really away? Disappear into the wild, go full feral?”
“I’ve spent enough time in the wild to know better.”
“Yeah, but if you had to.”
I considered it, then shook my head. “If I go feral, I’m dragging you with me.”
She smiled, genuine this time. “Promise?”
I tried to play it cool, but my hands shook as I flicked the lighter. The fire caught, crackled, and soon the stove radiated a low, comforting heat. Jasmine stretched like a cat, then patted the couch beside her. “Sit down, soldier. You’re making me nervous.”
I obeyed, and she leaned into my side, skin cold at first, then warming by degrees. She let her head fall to my shoulder, and I felt the old tension unspool, just a little. We watched the fire together, the only sound the snap of the logs and the hum of the generator.
“You know,” she said, voice softer now, “if you wanted to make a move, this would be a hell of a time.”
I hesitated. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I still half-expected her to bite.
She must have sensed it. “I’m not going to eat you,” she said. “Not unless you ask.”
“Old habits die hard.”
Her hand drifted to my thigh, casual but not accidental. “You could try trusting me,” she said.
I grunted. “You first.”
She laughed, a sound that was more music than threat. “Deal.”
We sat that way for a long time, saying nothing, the world outside reduced to rain on the roof and wind in the trees. The brand on my arm faded to a dull ache, then nothing at all. I let myself relax, just a little. Jasmine curled in closer, her hand tracing lazy circles on my leg.
Eventually, she stood, stretched, and walked to the window. She looked out into the dark, hands braced on the sill. “No one’s coming for us, are they?”
“Not tonight,” I said.
She nodded, then turned back to me, eyes gone nearly black in the low light. “Then let’s not waste it.”
She crossed the room, slow and deliberate.
When she reached me, she straddled my lap, her legs folding around my hips like it was the most natural thing in the world.
The shirt she wore slid up her thighs, and I realized she wasn’t wearing anything underneath.
Her skin was cold, but she pressed herself to me, breathing in the scent of woodsmoke and sweat.
“Still nervous?” she whispered, her mouth at my ear.
“Terrified.”
She kissed me, slow at first, then hard enough to leave a mark. I felt the edge of her teeth, but she was gentle, almost reverent.
When she pulled back, her eyes were wet. “Don’t let me go,” she said, voice barely audible.
I wrapped my arms around her, hands tracing the spine beneath the thin shirt. “I won’t.”
She kissed me again, softer this time. Then she slid off my lap, pulled me up, and led me toward the bed.
We left the fire burning, the rest of the world held at bay by wards and whiskey and the memory of what it was like to finally be free.
And for the first time in years, I didn’t dream of Hell.
***
The first thing I heard when I woke was the sound of glass clinking.
Jasmine sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the fireplace, a bottle of Old Forester in one hand and two mismatched mason jars on the rug.
The fire was down to red embers, but she kept prodding it with the iron poker, watching sparks drift up the flue.
She was still in my flannel, though the buttons had come mostly undone in her sleep, baring one perfect shoulder.
I sat up, stretching until my spine popped. The hangover was mild compared to the ones I’d survived with the MC, but it came with a bonus, a phantom ache running the length of my arm, like the brand had decided to take up bodybuilding while I slept.
Jasmine glanced over her shoulder, then crooked a finger. “C’mere, Torch. I need a drinking buddy.”
“You know it’s not even noon?”
She shrugged, poured two fingers into each jar. “Never stopped you before.”
I joined her on the floor, the boards cold under my legs. She handed me a jar, and I raised it in a half-assed toast. “To the end of the world,” I said.
“May it never come before dessert,” she replied. We drank.
We sat in silence for a minute, the whiskey burning a clean line down my throat and into my gut. Jasmine’s eyes reflected the fire, weird and beautiful and not quite safe.
She nudged the bottle toward me. “You ever think about what you’d do if you weren’t… this?”
She tapped my forearm, right on the new black line.
“Not really,” I said, and meant it. “I was born for the job.”
She snorted. “Nobody’s born to be a weapon. That’s just PR.”
“Maybe not. But I can’t picture myself pushing a lawnmower or grilling in the backyard. I’m shit at normal.”
She grinned, leaning in. “That’s the only thing we have in common.”
I eyed her. “You could’ve picked anyone in Hell, but you picked me. Why?”
She chewed her lip, considering. “Because you’re the only idiot who thinks he can save me.”
I let that hang for a while. The fire flickered, painting her face in moving stripes. I reached for the bottle, refilled her jar, and kept my own topped off. “You’re not broken,” I said, surprising us both.
She laughed, but there was no venom in it. “You liar.”