Page 33 of The Prospect's Succubus
For a second, everything was quiet, except for my own breathing and the ragged pulse of the talisman.
The demon bodies were already dissolving, sinking into themselves, leaving only puddles of tar and curls of sweet, chemical smoke.
I checked Jasmine.
She was alive, but just. Her lips were blue, and the veins under her skin pulsed in a way I didn’t like at all. I knelt beside her, holstered the gun, and tried to remember if she’d ever told me what to do in situations like this.
She opened one eye, unfocused. “Hey, soldier,” she whispered.
“Hey, yourself,” I said. “You gonna make it?”
She tried to laugh. “That’s a dumb question.”
“Can you walk?”
“Not unless you carry me.” Her eyelids fluttered, and her hand flopped weakly onto my wrist. “They were sent by—”
“I know who sent them.” I checked the wounds—three deep slashes on her calf, another on her ribs, and a burn I didn’t want to think about on her back. “We need to move.”
She nodded, then slumped against my chest.
I looked down at her, and for the first time since this all started, I felt the smallest edge of panic creep in. If Jasmine was this hurt, the next wave wouldn’t be so easy. And if she died on my watch, there wasn’t enough whiskey in Kentucky to drown out the shame.
I got her up, braced her weight against my side, and staggered toward the mouth of the alley. The air behind us filled with the stink of dissolving demon, but I didn’t look back.
The night was silent, and for a moment, I thought we’d made it.
Then the psychic link pulsed, one last time. This time, it was a warning.
Jasmine went limp before we made it to the main road. I felt the change the way you sense a light bulb dying, first a flicker, then the cold. Her weight hit me hard, heavier than she looked,and I almost lost my grip on her. For a second, I thought about letting her go. Just one slip, and she’d be out of the game, me absolved of all responsibility, my brothers spared the embarrassment of a prospect cuddling up with a demon. But I tightened my hold and kept walking.
She didn’t make a sound, even as the cuts on her arm kept leaking blood in thin, steady lines. Her skin was white as printer paper, except for the brand at her shoulder: a mess of spirals and script that pulsed with mean red light, angry and hot, even through the torn silk of her dress. I’d seen wounds like that before, back in the pit. They didn’t heal. They just deepened until there was nothing left but the mark.
The city was empty, or maybe just smart enough to pretend it didn’t see us. Every block was a new set of shadows, every closed storefront a potential enemy. I kept to the alleys, avoided the main drags, cut through parking lots and under bridges. Jasmine’s head lolled on my chest, hair sticking to the blood at her temple. I wanted to talk to her, tell her a joke, but I didn’t think she’d hear it.
My arms started to ache, not from her weight, but from the old burns crawling up from wrist to bicep. The scars glowed faint blue, a warning that the air around us was crawling with things best left unnamed. I moved faster.
The apartment was still there, lights off, sigils intact. I got us through the door without incident, dead-bolting every lock behind me. The candles in the safe room guttered, threatened to go out, then flared when I stepped over the threshold.
I laid Jasmine on the floor, using my jacket as a pillow. She twitched, once, then went still. I checked for a pulse, found it, but it was weak—there and gone, there and gone, like a radio station on the edge of reception.
I finished the circle. Salt, then a dusting of iron filings, then a fast pass of chalk to seal the perimeter. The whole thing lookedamateur hour, but it was good enough for field work. The air inside was stifling, the ozone so thick I coughed twice before I could breathe easy.
I dug a rag from the kitchen, wetted it, and cleaned the blood from Jasmine’s face. Her lips were parted, teeth clenched. The veins at her neck stood out, black and sharp. I tried to wipe away some of the soot from her arms, but it just smeared darker.
I got a better look at the brand. It had changed since the last time. The edges had crawled outward, tracing new shapes, the color gone from red to purple-black. Around the mark, the skin puckered, and beneath it, something moved—slow, deliberate, like roots burrowing.
I swore, loud enough to bounce off the walls.
She wasn’t dying from the wounds. She was being eaten, cell by cell, by whatever Lilith had left in her.
I grabbed the first aid kit and went to work. It wasn’t pretty. I patched the cuts with butterfly tape and gauze, wrapped the worst ones with duct tape, because she’d always said it worked better than anything else. I left the brand alone, though. Nothing I had could touch it.
After ten minutes, I sat back on my heels and tried to breathe. Jasmine’s chest rose and fell, but the rhythm was wrong—too shallow, too fast, a losing race.
I looked at her, really looked, and felt the old hate start to flicker. The kind you get when you realize you’re powerless, but too stubborn to give in. I pressed my palm to the floor and let the runes do their thing, hoping the circle would buy us some time.
It did, but only a little.
