Page 44 of The Prospect's Succubus
“Means she’s not coming for us until the last act.” Torch nodded. “Buys us a few hours.”
I sat up. The room spun, but not the usual kind. Every nerve in my body still crackled from the ritual. I could taste Torch’s aftershave, feel his old Army number ticking like an egg timer under my skin. My own thoughts were a drowning man’s limb—random, frantic, clawing for the surface.
Sera approached, crouched in front of me. “How’s the brand?”
I yanked the collar aside. The skin was smooth, a faint line the color of an old bruise. No trace of the sigil. I looked at Torch’s arm; his new black streak ran from wrist to elbow, stark against the blue-white scars.
“Looks better than it feels,” I said. “Still hurts. Different, but not gone.”
Sera shrugged. “Pain means you’re still fighting. It’ll fade if you win, or get replaced by something worse if you lose.”
“Love your optimism,” I muttered.
She stood and turned to Kane. “We should regroup at the clubhouse. Bring the rest of the boys up to speed.”
Kane grunted his agreement, already checking his phone for the latest panics. “You want us to babysit, or…?”
Sera shook her head. “This is Jasmine’s fight. And Torch’s.” She looked at me, gaze suddenly very old. “Don’t fuck it up.”
She and Kane left, the lock clicking in their wake. For a while, the apartment was silent except for the soft pop and hiss of the dying candles. I watched the blue wax puddle on the windowsill and wondered how long we had before the whole world melted down.
Torch reached for his lighter, fumbled it, then left it on the floor. “You okay?” he asked, and I knew he meant it.
I wanted to say yes. Instead, I blurted, “Why’d you do it?”
He rolled onto his back, staring at the ruined ceiling. “Because I’m tired of losing.”
I laughed, short and sharp. “That’s a shit reason.”
He looked at me, eyes wild in the candlelight. “You got a better one?”
I didn’t. But I wanted to. I wanted to say I’d do anything to keep him safe, that the brand was my burden, not his. That I was willing to go alone, if it meant he didn’t get pulled back under. Instead, I just looked at our twin marks and tried to imagine a future where we weren’t both fucked.
The silence stretched. Torch’s breathing slowed, body finally admitting to the exhaustion he’d been fighting all night. I watched his eyelids droop, his hands relax. When his head tipped back and his jaw went slack, I knew he was out. Not dead, not even close, but the closest to peace he’d had in weeks.
I crawled to the kitchen, found a pen, and the only unbloodied scrap of paper I could. My hands shook so bad I had to write twice, the first draft a mess of misspellings and ink smears. The second try was better.
Torch—
Don’t follow. Lilith wants a finale, and she needs me for the fireworks. If I go alone, maybe I can end this before she drags you through again. The brand’s your curse now, too, but if I can break the chain for good, you’ll be free. Don’t wait up.
—Jasmine
I set the note by his hand, careful not to brush his skin. I packed a bag—lighter, phone, the old obsidian knife—and slung it over my shoulder. The wards at the door still glowed faintly; I stepped around them, using the gaps Sera had left like a thread through a minefield.
At the threshold, I looked back. Torch had curled on his side, one arm under his head, the other draped over his ribs. His face was softer, younger. The scars on his arm glowed in the dark, blue-white and restless. I memorized it, every line.
Then I left, closing the door on the only thing that ever made me want to stay.
The hallway smelled of cleaning fluid and ozone. I let myself out the side entrance, boots silent on the concrete, and started walking toward the one place Lilith would never expect to find me.
I walked into the dark, alone. But the bond hummed at my wrist, a low, steady drumbeat that reminded me what waited at the end of the night.
The city was quieter than it should have been at midnight, but even the rats had learned not to fuck with the path to Carlisle. Streetlights glitched, traffic lights blinked hazard red, and every trash can along the route was slick with something black and a little too sticky to be just garbage juice. I kept my head down, hood up, eyes fixed on the distant neon of the carnival.
The closer I got, the more the world peeled back its skin. The banners that had once promised cotton candy and fortune telling now shivered with hidden sigils, their slogans rewritten in a script that made my retinas itch. The parking lot was a mess of abandoned cars, most of them dusted with fine white ash that hadn’t been there an hour ago. The ticket booth was gone, or maybe it had never existed, replaced by a roving crowd of shadows that shaped themselves into whatever face I didn’t want to see.
The main gate yawned, wide and toothy. I passed through it, and the air changed from bad to biblical. On my left, the carousel spun slow, each horse replaced by something that had never seen a farm. I counted wolf heads, goat skulls, and one that might have been a child’s face stretched over an engine block. They snapped and howled as they turned, gnashing at the wind, but the ride played on, same sad calliope tune as always, just a few keys off and enough to make your gums bleed if you listened too long.
