I smiled, all teeth. “No promises.”
Torch
The church looked worse in the aftermath, all raw edges and torn guts. Every pew was split like firewood. Stained glass sparkled across the floor, slicing color into the blood pools. The observer’s corpse still smoked, tar bubbling from the hole where I’d cored its skull. Jasmine sat slumped against the wreck of the altar, hair stuck to her cheek, skin crosshatched with burns where she’d gone full demon in sacred territory.
I should’ve finished it. Everything in me—training, scars, even the jitter in my trigger finger—screamed to end her now, before she could get up and try again. But the longer I stared, the less it felt like a job. She looked more like a person, and less like a problem to be solved. Not that I’d ever say it out loud.
Jasmine’s chest heaved. The slit in her dress ran thigh to navel, and under the fabric her flesh was stippled with ugly blisters. The sigil at her hip—Hell’s brand, still faintly glowing—looked like it was trying to eat the rest of her. She glared up at me, mouth bloody at the corner.
“Going to gloat, soldier?” Her voice was glass shards, wet and mean.
“I came to watch you die,” I said, and meant it. “But it looks like you’re too stubborn for that.”
She spat a tooth. It rattled down the marble and came to rest at my boot. “Didn’t realize it was a spectator sport.”
I flicked the safety off the 1911, sighted her center mass. “This is the part where you beg.”
She laughed, or tried to, and coughed up a thread of black. “Do you even know why you’re doing this?”
“I don’t need a reason.”
She looked past me, at the smoldering demon, at the ruined nave, at the stars through the broken window. “Neither do I,” she whispered.
Something in me snapped. The compulsion, the rage, all of it went hollow. I could shoot her, and maybe I’d get a medal. Maybe Vin would buy me another drink. But the memory of her on the ride, her body folded over mine, the way she’d smiled with blood on her teeth, it all felt too real to throw away on a mercy kill.
I clicked the gun to safe, dropped it at my side. “You’re not the only one who wants answers.”
Jasmine’s eyes flicked up, wary.
“We both know this isn’t about quota,” I said. “Someone sent that thing to make sure you failed. Hell doesn’t waste resources on insurance unless they’re expecting trouble.”
She rolled her head back, banged it against the altar. “You think you know Hell. That’s adorable.”
“I know more than you think.” I let the scars on my forearms light up, blue-white arcs pulsing against my skin. “I know they don’t like it when a soldier goes off script.”
She flinched, involuntary. “You want a confession, Torch? Fine.” Her eyes burned red, then flicked to violet. “I’ve got until Halloween, tomorrow, to fill Lilith’s ledger. Four souls. Three down, one to go. If I fail—” She bared her teeth, and this time the smile was brittle. “You ever see what Hell does to its own?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Every time I look in a mirror.”
Jasmine shivered. The air in the church felt colder now, and not just from the draft through the windows. “So what? You kill me, and another girl gets the job.”
“I don’t want another girl,” I said, before I could stop myself.
She blinked, surprised. “You’re a real mess, you know that?”
“Story of my life.” I kicked aside the tooth, crouched down so we were eye to eye. “You want to live, or you want to make a deal?”
She looked at my hands, then her own, then the gory expanse of the nave. “You trust me?”
“Not even a little.” I unzipped my jacket, yanked out the small first aid kit I kept for emergencies that didn’t involve actual bullets. “But I trust you hate Hell more than you hate me.”
She took the gauze, fingers shaking. “What’s your angle, Torch?”
“Simple.” I thumbed open a bottle of holy water, poured it slow onto the gouges in my arm. “We make a truce. For as long as it takes to get Lilith off your ass, and mine.”
She barked a laugh, wiped the sweat from her brow. “You want to fuck me over in person, not by proxy.”
“I want to watch you finish the job. Then we see where it goes.” I tore open a packet of coagulant, dusted it over her shoulder. She didn’t wince, but her face went tight. “You in?”
