Page 1 of The Prospect's Succubus
Torch
They tell you Hell leaves a mark, but that’s bullshit. Hell doesn’t just leave a mark. Hell peels back your skin and stamps itself onto every wet, quivering inch beneath. What no one ever mentions is how, when you come crawling back, the regular world looks like a cheap rental in comparison—walls too thin, shadows too timid, air that doesn’t know how to burn.
My apartment was never meant for the living. It was the top floor in a four-story walk-up, its floor plan a jigsaw of makeshift repairs and water damage from decades of tenants who cared less than I did. The space reeked of old wiring, gas station coffee, and a chemical cocktail concocted from cheap cleaning supplies and even cheaper whiskey. Every evening, I turned off the hallway light, flicked on the desk lamp, and made myself at home among the ghosts.
The desk, a battered slab of Army surplus, was the only thing that hadn’t tried to kill me yet. Tonight, it was a battlefield, hometo semi-automatic pistols in various states of undress, a pump-action twelve gauge with its barrel half-swabbed, and the sharp, metallic scent of solvent stinging the back of my throat. A map of Carlisle—our little slice of Satan’s playground—was tacked above the workspace, its surface a crime scene of pushpins, Sharpie, and sticky notes bleeding with angry handwriting.
The walls were covered with sigils. Not the kind you find in movie prop departments, but real work: iron filings ground into paint, lines drawn with the sort of precision that doesn’t leave room for artistic interpretation. The southern wall’s centerpiece was a triple-barred seal, the sort that made your skin crawl if you stared too long. Below it, a milk crate bulged with books on demonology and military tactics, jostling for elbow room with pizza boxes and a shrine of half-drained Monster cans.
The only thing uglier than the décor was the lighting. My lamp was an old brass banker’s job, rescued from a flea market after the shade had melted to a surrealistic swirl. It threw a mean, clinical pool of light across the desk and left the rest of the room in velvet shadow. I preferred it that way. It made the darkness feel honest.
On the left edge of the desk, just within reach, were the files Vin had the RBMC pull together. Three bodies in three weeks, all men, all locals, all gone before the county coroner could make rent on his new fishing boat. I pulled the first one free and let the photo do its job. Grayson, twenty-seven, a bartender with biceps like pork roasts and the kind of smile that got him in trouble. He was found in the woods behind the carnival, lips blue and eyes staring straight up at the stuttering neon. The reported cause of death was cardiac arrest, but the ME wrote “unknown etiology” in her notes, which meant she’d found nothing but didn’t want to sound incompetent.
I set Grayson’s photo next to the SIG and studied the details. His skin tone was normal, though a little flushed. Nopetechiae around the eyelids, which would’ve meant suffocation. Fingernails were clean. I dug into the supplemental photos, the crime scene shots from the woods. Empty vodka minis, a carnival prize stuffed bear, a single set of woman’s footprints in the mud, high heel, size six. The prints started at the edge of the trees and vanished halfway down, like she’d either flown or never existed at all.
I opened the second file on a man name Vargas. Twenty, a college sophomore, failing Intro to Philosophy and never paid for a drink in his life. Last seen outside the Gravitron ride, flirting with a woman no one else remembered seeing. His body wasn’t found for three days. His skin had “peculiar bruising along the carotid artery,” the report said, and the toxicology screen read negative across the board. The photo showed him slumped against a chain-link fence, his expression somewhere between bliss and bewilderment. I could see the outline of teeth on his neck, just below the jaw, nearly invisible unless you’d been bitten by worse.
The third file, a man name Walters, was the messiest. A forty-year-old married man with two kids drove a hearse for the only black-suited funeral home in the county. His wife reported him missing after he didn’t come home from the carnival security gig, but he didn’t turn up until a week later, when a jogger found his remains in the marshland a mile off-site. The body was all wrong. Hair bleached white, muscles atrophied, like he’d lost twenty years overnight. Eyes wide open, pupils blown so huge you couldn’t see the iris. They called it “sudden-onset organ failure.” That’s what they always called it when Hell paid a house call, and no one wanted to sound crazy.
At the bottom of the stack were the witness sketches that were four versions of the same face. I shuffled them and laid them out side by side. Each was slightly different, but the bone structure was consistent with a heart-shaped jaw, high cheekbones, fullmouth. The hair changed from raven black to “red with a shimmer,” depending on who was doing the remembering. The eyes were always wrong by being too large, too bright, or pupils that looked like they could swallow you whole. The witnesses struggled to recall her outfit, but everyone agreed on the perfume, describing it as sweet, cloying, and strong enough to make one's teeth ache. I’d bet my last dollar on the scent, incense, myrrh, and the kind of musk that promised both sex and slaughter.
Next to the files, I lined up the ammo. The rounds weren’t standard, each one inscribed with wards so delicate you could barely see the etching unless you held them to the light just right. I’d done the work myself, a ritual more sacred than Sunday mass. Some of the bullets were silver, others a custom alloy with a holy-water core. Most nights, I didn’t need the special shit. Tonight, though, I’d be facing down a full-blooded succubus, which meant every advantage counted.
I looked back at the photographs, the trinity of dead men, and tried to imagine what went through their minds before the end. Desire, obviously. But under that, a compulsion, a hunger so sharp it would carve out your own name if you let it. I knew the feeling. Every day, I fought not to let it win.
I thumbed through the last of the crime scene prints. In each, the woman’s presence lingered, like static on a dead channel. The way Grayson’s body leaned forward, desperate even in death. The blissed-out smile on Vargas, eyelids drooping like he was still dreaming. The terror etched into Walters’ face, as if he’d seen what waited on the other side and wished, for a moment, he hadn’t.
I set the photos in a row, edge to edge, and stared them down. The chill from the window drafted over my arms and hit the scars that webbed my forearms, each a souvenir from a war the rest of the world pretended wasn’t happening. Most peoplecalled me Torch. The name wasn’t as clever as my brothers in RBMC thought, but it fit better than Daniel ever did. When you come back from Hell, you’re supposed to feel grateful, alive, renewed. I just felt hot all the time, like the flames hadn’t quite let me go.
The apartment felt even smaller than usual tonight. Maybe it was the weight of the job, or the way the sigils seemed to flex against the shadows every time I blinked. Whatever it was, it had my nerves standing at attention, ready for the next move.
I turned off the lamp and let my eyes adjust. Even in darkness, I could see the shape of things. Especially the monsters. I checked the clock. Four hours to sundown. Plenty of time to get twitchy.
The worst thing about Hell is how it doesn’t want you to forget. The second you let your mind wander, it reaches up from wherever you left it and yanks you back down.
It started the same every time, the suffocating heat, so thick it pressed your eyes flat against the back of your skull. The darkness, absolute, except for the rivers of blue fire that cut through the black. The sound of metal—chains, gears, teeth—screaming in rhythm with a heartbeat that was never quite your own.
Sometimes I saw the faces. Sometimes it was just the sound, an echo racing down an endless corridor lined with hooks. Tonight, it was the fire. I could smell it, taste the burnt air. Could feel the weight of the manacles biting into my wrists, the tremor in my legs as I ran, desperate, knowing the next misstep would be the last.
I jerked myself back to the present, exhaled so hard my chest ached. My forearms were lit up like fucking Christmas, blue-white lines worming across the skin in random, living patterns. I gritted my teeth, flexed my fingers until the knuckles cracked, and waited for the pulse to fade. I knew it would. It always did.
I muttered a short prayer, not to God, not anymore, but to whatever was left in the gap where faith used to be. Maybe I was asking the guns to run clean, maybe I was asking myself not to fuck it up. Didn’t matter. The words came anyway.
I sat back in the chair, letting the tension drain out, and watched the scars dim down to a dull glow. The desk looked like a shrine after a blackout, the ammo casting weird shadows across the map, and the little sea of evidence files. For a moment, I let myself drift. Not to Hell. Not tonight. Instead, I focused on the job.
Three men dead, all emptied out by the same predator. If the pattern held, there’d be another body by morning, unless I beat her to it.
The carnival was set up on the south edge of town, temporary as a fever dream. It was a nesting ground for gambling, booze, and enough horny desperation to fuel a small genocide. If I were a succubus, I couldn’t think of a better place to hunt. Throw in Halloween, and the bitch was in her element.
I leaned over and caught my reflection in the window. I was a pale, scarred bastard with eyes a shade too light and nothing in them but heat. For a second, I wondered what it looked like from the other side. The chill on my arms told me one thing for sure, that the monsters weren’t going to hunt themselves.
I’m sorry, I’ve gotten way ahead of myself. My name is Daniel “Torch” Clark. When the club, the Royal Bastards Motorcycle Club, Lexington, Kentucky chapter, isn’t calling me Prospect, they call me Torch.
I was found in the Lexington Cemetery by Vin, the club’s president.
It was raining that night, the heavy, metallic sort, like a fistful of old nails thrown through a wood chipper. I remember waking up in the mud, my tongue thick and my guts twisted sideways, like I’d spent all night gargling razorblades and bad tequila. Thecemetery gates loomed in the distance, blurred by tears or sweat or worse. A statue of a grieving angel hunched over a headstone, wings broken and face melted from years of acid rain. I could relate.
I half-crawled, half-dragged myself to the fence line, not sure yet if I was alive. I remember the hum of motorcycle engines punctuating the wet silence, the low growl familiar, almost comforting, even with my skull trying to split open. It was Vin, standing astride his Triumph at the broken iron gate. He didn’t say a word at first, just stared, letting the engine idle while I shivered in the dirt.
