Page 43 of The Prospect's Succubus
I dropped into position, feeling every old joint protest. Jasmine mirrored me, face a war zone of hope and dread.
Sera began chanting. Not Latin, not Greek, not even the weird angel tongue I’d heard in Hell. It was something older, and it vibrated through the floorboards, made the books rattle on the shelves and the glass in the windows shiver. As she picked upspeed, the air around us got thick, every breath tasting of ozone and copper.
“Now,” Sera said.
I pressed my hand to the scale. Jasmine did the same. The moment our skin touched the obsidian, a shock shot up my arm, burning through nerve and bone until it landed square in my chest.
I gritted my teeth, tried not to scream. Across from me, Jasmine’s face contorted, eyes rolling back for a split second before she jerked her head up, locked eyes with me, and smiled.
The symbols on the floor lit up, blue and red and gold. The scale pulsed, then split in two, half of it dissolving into my palm, half into hers. I felt the old brand on my arm flare in response, the scars lighting up like a runway.
Sera’s voice rose, reached a fever pitch, then cut off like a guillotine.
The world snapped back. My hand was still on the scale, but it was gone, replaced by a thin black line that traced from my wrist to my shoulder. Jasmine’s shoulder was clear—the brand had faded, the skin unbroken. But her hand trembled, and I saw the same line racing up her arm, a mirror of mine.
Sera stood over us, drained but smiling. “It worked,” she said. “You’re both marked. But you’re both free. For now.”
Jasmine collapsed backward, laughing through tears. “I can’t believe it. It fucking worked.”
I flexed my hand, testing the new mark. It hurt, but in a different way than before. Less like Hell, more like a promise.
Kane stepped in, grinning wide. “You did it, man.”
I looked at Jasmine, who was staring back with something like awe.
“Not bad for a guy who can’t coordinate his candles,” she said.
I reached out, took her hand, and squeezed. “Couldn’t have done it without you.”
Sera turned away, already cleaning up the circle, muttering to herself about salt and permanence.
I looked at the new black line on my arm, then at Jasmine, then at the wreck of my living room.
We’d bought another night, but this time, the war wasn’t just with Hell.
It was with ourselves.
Jasmine/Torch
When it was over, we lay there in the bunker apartment, side by side on the laminate floor. Torch’s hand was a centimeter from mine, close enough I could feel the static, not enough to risk another chemical burn. The salt circle had been kicked apart in the rush; Sera had swept it into a tidy crescent and then stepped out for air, leaving us with the residue and the crackle of the new, raw bond lighting up the whole room like a live wire.
The first thing I noticed was the lack of pain. The brand at my shoulder had stopped pulsing, and the black veins that had been creeping toward my spine now lay dormant, as if stunned. I flexed my fingers and felt only the ordinary ache of someone who’d just survived a full-frontal assault from Hell’s favorite mother. Next to me, Torch exhaled, eyelids fluttering as he checked for new wounds. I could see the echo of my ownpanic bouncing around inside him. The blood bond, so recently minted, didn’t bother with subtlety.
He rolled onto his side, studied me like I was a slow-motion car crash. “You alive?”
“Relative term,” I said. “But yeah.”
We lay there, breathing. The hum of the blood bond was like tinnitus, but for feelings. His stubbornness, my fear, his sick curiosity, my guilt. It was impossible to keep straight what belonged to who. I didn’t even try.
Sera ducked back in, her eyes doing that weird camera shutter thing as she scanned the aftermath. “Looks like you two set a land speed record for co-dependent pacts. Never saw a signature bond sync up that fast.”
Torch didn’t answer, but I felt his chest tighten with pride anyway. Or maybe that was mine. Across the room, Kane was testing the perimeter, running his palm over the sigils as if expecting the wallpaper to bite back. He looked at me and raised his chin.
“Carnival’s gone quiet,” Kane said. “But Vin’s got eyes on the midway. It’s not dead, just… coiled.”
Torch propped himself up on one elbow. “She’s waiting. That’s her play.”
Sera gave a tight, surgical smile. “Correct. Lilith will want a dramatic finale. Maximum audience.”
