Page 37 of The Prospect's Succubus
I smiled, teeth bloody. “I was born ready.”
The wall exploded inward, showering us with debris and the scent of scorched perfume. On the other side, the city burned. And at the center of it, I saw her—the only woman I’d ever been afraid of, and the only one I’d ever wanted to kill.
Lilith stepped through the fire like it was a red carpet, eyes blazing, hair snapping behind her in a comet tail. She smiled, and for a second, I forgot about the pain, the brand, the rage. All I felt was the pull of gravity, of inevitability, of home.
Torch fired first. Three shots, all dead-on. Lilith caught them in her palm, squeezed, and let the molten lead drip to the floor. Her laugh was silk and razors.
“You always did have terrible aim, Torch,” she purred.
He chambered another round. “Still better than your maternal instincts.”
She laughed again, and the sound peeled another layer off my brain. “Oh, Jasmine. You never learn. You always pick the losing side.”
I struggled to my feet, every nerve in my body firing at once. “This isn’t about sides, Lilith. This is about endings.”
Lilith cocked her head. “So dramatic. But then, you always were my favorite.”
She reached out, and the brand at my shoulder ignited, heat radiating through the room. I screamed, but I didn’t drop. Torch grabbed my hand, squeezed until I felt the bones grind together.
Lilith’s apparition disappeared, and we knew exactly where she’d gone.
“We do this together,” Torch said.
I nodded, even as my vision blurred. “Let’s go, then. Let’s end it.”
And we stepped forward, straight into the fire.
We stumbled through the corridor, which was quickly filling with black smoke, walls glowing orange as the apartment building started to catch. Down three flights, Torch kicking doors and howling at neighbors to get out, and then into the alley, where the air tasted less like death but more like burnt sugar.
I gasped, clawing at my shoulder, trying to dig the heat out. It was no use. I doubled over, hands on knees, and watched my shadow warp and slither across the bricks. It had horns now, and a tail. Maybe I did, too. Hard to tell.
Torch scanned the street, eyes wide and wild. “She’ll expect us to run.”
“Who said we’re running?” I spat, then regretted it as my tongue crackled in my mouth. “She wants to drag us to the carnival. We go there, we die on her stage.”
He grinned, the kind of grin that would scare a priest. “Then we fuck up the script.”
That’s why I loved him. Or maybe just liked him enough to die with him. Hard to say.
He half-dragged, half-carried me to the car—a battered Charger, reinforced steel under the candy-apple paint—and threw me in the passenger seat. His bike lay on its side, destroyed. “Buckle up,” he said, and gunned it.
The city outside was chaos. Sirens everywhere, sky bleeding red. I craned my neck to the east and saw a pillar of fire licking up from the fairgrounds, high enough to black out the moon. I felt it, too, like the world’s worst migraine, centered behind my right eye.
My phone buzzed, then rang, then died. Torch’s went the same way. “She’s cutting comms,” I said, through gritted teeth.
“Not surprised,” he replied. “I’m more interested in what you saw.”
I gripped the dashboard, fighting another wave. “She’s got the ringmaster. He’s not human anymore. She’s using him like a tuning fork, setting the whole place vibrating at Hell’s frequency.”
Torch nodded, like he’d suspected as much. “The rides?”
I closed my eyes, tried not to scream as the brand hit another spike. “The carousel’s the main portal. Every time it goes around, it opens wider. The horses—they’re not wood anymore. They bite. The ghost train… it’s a real train now. And it only goes one direction.”
“Down,” he said, and punched the gas.
We hit the edge of the fairgrounds and bailed. The heat was worse here, the air shimmering with power. I could see the Enochian sigils floating above the main gate, spinning like sawblades. The crowd wasn’t running. They were stuck, shuffling like zombies from one ride to another, eyes glazed, faces lit with the reflected glow of hellfire. Nobody screamed. Not anymore.
Torch scanned the crowd, looking for Kane, for Sera, for any of his brothers. I knew he wouldn’t find them. They were either inside, or gone.
