Page 24 of The Prospect's Succubus
She looked at the blood on her hands, the burns, the bruises. “Fine,” she said, and it was less a word than a dare.
I reached for the knife at my belt, the silvered one, and drew it quick. She tensed, expecting a double-cross. I just nicked my palm, squeezed out a bead of red onto the ruined marble.
Jasmine’s eyes widened. “You’re serious.”
“Blood pact.” I wiped the blade on my jeans and handed it to her. “Even odds.”
She studied the knife, then her own skin, then me. She ran the blade across her palm, not deep, but enough. Her blood came out black, thick as ink, with a shimmer of blue. She let it drip, the drops mixing with mine on the floor.
The reaction was instant. The air went stiff, like the inside of a switchblade. My scars blazed, not just the normal fire but something deeper, a crawl of heat up my arm and into my skull. I saw her, not just the girl in front of me, but the memories behind her eyes, the creation in Hell’s forges, the taste of iron and ash, the endless drills of manipulation and hunger and seduction until it was second nature. I saw her first kill, the boy who begged her to stop, the centuries of faces that blurred together, the endless ache of never being enough. I saw the pit, and the queen who ran it, and the hollow at the center of her chest where even hope had been stripped out.
And she saw me. The grave, the return, the way Vin had pulled me from the mud, broken and half-feral. She saw the years of trying to be human again, the sleepless nights, the club as the only place that felt like home. She saw my first kill after Hell, the way I’d torn the demon apart with my bare hands, not because I had to, but because it felt like the only way to prove I was still on the right side.
We both jerked back, clutching our heads. The rush faded, but the echo of it stayed, a pulse under the skin, a knowledge you couldn’t un-know.
“Well,” Jasmine panted, “that was unpleasant.”
“I’ve had worse first dates.” My pulse hammered, not from fear, but from a sick kind of excitement. “You got what you need?”
She nodded, but didn’t trust herself to speak. She wrapped the gauze around her palm, fingers slick with the mixed blood.
I picked up my gun, checked the slide. “It’s not over. Lilith will come herself if you don’t finish the job.”
“Then you better keep up, soldier.”
The look she gave me was raw, all mask gone. For the first time, I believed she wanted to live, and not just out of fear.
“We move at dawn,” I said.
She stood, swaying, but there was steel in her spine. “I’ll be ready.”
***
Jasmine’s penthouse looked like a luxury magazine had thrown up all over a glass tower, but tonight the whole place felt off. Even from the street, you could sense the wrongness, the way the lights flickered just a half-beat behind the rest of the building. She was already on edge when she unlocked the door. I saw it in the way her hand hovered over the handle, in the way she checked the hallway three times before stepping inside.
The stench hit first: scorched hair, charred plastic, a low note of sulfur that made her eyes water. She clicked the lights, but half the bulbs had been smashed, and the rest pulsed weakly against the dark. Someone had ransacked the living room. The drawers were ripped open, furniture flipped, her collection of murder trophy lighters scattered across the marble floor like confetti.
Whatever had done this was long gone, but the message was obvious, even to someone who’d grown up in the Queen’s own school of psychological warfare.
It was in the bedroom that she found the main event. It was a single wall, once pristine, now blackened from floor to ceiling. The message was burned into the paint, each letter three feet high and still glowing at the edges, hellfire slow to cool in the mortal world. It read:
TRAITORS BURN ETERNALLY
Jasmine stared at the words for a long time, not moving, not breathing. The mark at her hip throbbed in sympathy, and for the first time, she understood that she wasn’t a freelancer anymore. She was property, and her owner was pissed.
She crossed the room, reached out, and touched the edge of the warning. The heat singed her fingertips, but she didn’t pull away. She let it hurt, let it sink all the way down to the bones. She could still feel me, a phantom echo under her skin, a reminder that she wasn’t alone, even if it meant damnation.
She traced the letters, and her fingers left a new mark, a smear of ash that was more defiance than apology.
Jasmine stood in the center of her ruined palace, the city lights bleeding in through the glass, and let the truth settle.
There was no way back. Only forward, through fire and blood and whatever came next.
She smiled, faint and sharp, and whispered a promise to the dark. She would burn the world down herself—before Hell had the chance.
Torch
Iwaited at the edge of Carlisle Carnival, where the lights had all gone dead. No music, no barkers, not even the sickly glow of neon. Just the metal skeletons of rides, the stink of spent electricity, and a sky too dark to promise anything but more night. The ghost train, which usually coughed up giggling families and hormone-drunk teens, sat on its rails like a coffin with the lid nailed shut. I leaned against one of the cars, boots planted, arms folded. The air around me crackled, maybe from the leftover holy iron in my blood, maybe from the anticipation of what was about to happen.
