Page 16 of The Prospect's Succubus
The words scrawled themselves across the back of my eyes, a blackboard of shame. I could feel her watching my every move, her gaze as inescapable as the old woman’s in the tent. Worse, really, because Lilith didn’t just look, she burned. She burned away any hope I had of hiding. I tried to respond, tried to shape a thought through the ice, but my brain seized, and the only thing that made it out was a desperate, “I’ll finish it. Just need more time.”
More time. Like it was a favor, like time was something you could negotiate with a demoness who could snap the sun in half if she felt like it.
“Do not fail me.” The pain was a fist, right between the eyes. “Or I will take everything.”
And just like that, she was gone.
I crumpled against the booth, gasping. The carnival noises crashed back in, sharp and hostile. A family of four paused nearby, their youngest pointing at me and asking why the lady looked like she was going to die. The mother yanked him away, shooting me a glare that said “junkie” with more venom than a snake pit. She wasn’t far off.
I stood, legs jelly, and tried to walk it off. The world was too bright, every bulb an accusation, every voice a threat. I wove through the midway, past the beer tent and the funnel cake stand, each step measured to keep me from collapse. I wanted to scream, to punch a hole through the nearest game booth and drag Lilith out by the hair, but all I could do was move, one foot in front of the other, hoping the adrenaline would drown out the fear.
I aimed for the exit. I needed out, I needed air, I needed distance between me and the crush of bodies and the old woman’s prophecy and, most of all, between me and him.
But of course, he was there.
Torch. Just standing in the middle of the crowd, arms folded, scars blazing like road flares under the jacket. His eyes were lit, searching, methodical, no trace of the panic he should have felt after the train. He was scanning faces, one by one, not missing a single detail. He saw me before I even saw him. I knew it. I felt it, like a fishhook tugging at the base of my skull.
I stopped dead, too slow to hide.
He kept his distance, just watched, not moving. His gaze was clinical, but behind it, there was something wild, something barely restrained. I wanted to turn and run, but my feet betrayed me; they stayed rooted, traitorous, as if the prophecy in the tent had nailed them to the earth.
The crowd thickened between us. Teens with churros, a couple in matching “THIS GUY LOVES CORNDOGS” T-shirts, a carnyhauling trash to the bins. It didn’t matter. In his eyes, I was the only thing that existed. I felt the scars on his arms from here, felt them hum in time with my own pulse.
We stared each other down, the kind of standoff that usually ends in either violence or sex, and I had no idea which would be worse.
Time lagged. The air shimmered. I could see the headlines now: WOMAN FOUND DEAD AT FAIR, CAUSE OF DEATH UNDETERMINED. Maybe I’d deserve it, maybe not. Maybe he’d do it quick. Maybe he’d drag it out, make it last.
What scared me most was how much I wanted both.
He took a single step closer, boots heavy on the dirt. The crowd parted without knowing why. He raised his hand, not in threat, but in invitation.
“Ready for round two?” he called, voice all bourbon and smoke, just loud enough to cut the noise.
I laughed, because what the fuck else could I do? I didn’t answer, just met his eyes and let the want in my chest burn through the last of the cold.
I walked toward him, step by step, not sure if I was going to kiss him or kill him, and pretty sure I’d enjoy whichever came first.
Behind me, I felt the fortune teller’s eyes, and somewhere below, I felt Lilith smile.
Torch
Iused to think Hell was a one-way ticket. But after days of hunting the city’s most wanted demoness and coming up empty, I started to suspect I’d brought the place back with me, brick by smoldering brick. My apartment, already a bunker by design, was now something closer to a panic room for the recently damned. The windows were triple-locked and crosshatched with sigils I’d hand-inked after every close call; the doors were reinforced with enough deadbolts to make a SWAT team sweat. Every surface—couch, fridge, TV stand, even the shitter—bore the marks of a man determined to keep the monsters out, or at least slow them down long enough for a last stand.
The club was fully aware of my penchant for safety. Hell, the other club prospects had helped me install half the shit. Besides, I was brought on board for this sole purpose, to hunt down and kill anything Hell decided to bring at us. Unfortunately, I wasn’tso sure I could take Jasmine out. How the fuck was I suppose to explain that to Vin and the club? I fucking couldn’t and needed to figure my shit out.
Tonight, the only light came from candles. Not out of romance, but necessity. There are some things in the dark that only real flame can push back. I’d placed a grid of them around the perimeter, each squat glass votive guttering against the breath of some phantom draft. Shadows played on the walls, looping through the air like they were practicing for a haunting, and I did my best to ignore them.
The desk in the corner had once been for club business, but now it was a shrine to paranoia. On the left, a row of pistols and a half-assembled carbine. On the right, three open notebooks and a scatter of runes, each carved from river stone and painted with blood. Centered under the swing-arm lamp was my favorite, the battered Moleskine where I tracked every move the succubus had made since she’d hit town.
But tonight, I wasn’t updating the map. I wasn’t working through the evidence, or even dry-firing the 1911 until the slide drew blood from my palm. Instead, I was sketching her face. Again.
It started as idle therapy, a way to force the image out of my skull and onto the paper. Now it was compulsion, a nervous tic with a body count. I’d filled five pages already, and each attempt only made it worse. The first couple tries were just outlines, cheekbones and the sweep of hair, lips parted in mid-threat. But every pass, I lost time. I’d finish a line and look up to find whole minutes gone, whole candles melted to stubs. Sometimes the air was so thick with her perfume—myrrh and burnt sugar—I’d swear she was standing in the room, breathing down my neck.
I tried to exorcise her with ink. It didn’t work. The more I drew, the more I remembered the details: the way her eyes flickered between colors when she got excited, the delicatefreckle just beneath her left earlobe, the subtle crook of her smile when she knew you were bluffing and about to lose. The sketches improved in quality as they worsened in effect; by page six, I was shading in the hair with a focus that bordered on the erotic. Every line was a confession.
I caught myself, left hand locked in a death grip on the pencil, right hand tracing the edge of my cut like it was a rosary. My forearms were pulsing, not just with the strain, but with the old familiar itch, the blue-white glow of Hell’s leftovers, crawling under my skin whenever I let my guard down. It flared brightest when I thought about her.
The walls of the apartment, covered in overlapping symbols and sigils, seemed to close in. Some of the ink was still wet, shiny against the eggshell paint. When the paranoia got bad, I’d go over the whole place, re-inking every line, reciting the Latin and Enochian and even some old German expletives I remembered from my grandfather. “Fuck off, you slimy bastard,” was surprisingly effective, as long as you meant it.
