Page 45 of The Prospect's Succubus
The Ferris wheel moved backward, gears grinding with every revolution. Each car held a single passenger, but the faces were all wrong, eyes too big or mouths welded shut. The closer you looked, the more they looked like people you’d known—teachers, lovers, that one guy you ran over with a bike in third grade and never apologized to. They stared as I passed, mouths working like they wanted to scream but only making a whispery hiss, like air leaking from a deflating bouncy house.
Food stands had become butcher shops, the staff in paper hats but with hands stained up to the elbow. A girl in a tutu offered me a candied apple, but the “apple” twitched when she bit it, red syrup streaking her chin. I kept walking, because you don’t come to a place like this for the cuisine.
Carnies wandered the grounds in clusters, the human disguise holding until you blinked, and then the skin would slip, revealing something fanged, something scaled, or just… extra. One tall fucker in a striped vest had three arms and used them to juggle knives, cigarettes, and a squirming cat that definitely didn’t want to be part of the act. Nobody stopped me, but the further I got, the more their eyes tracked me, whispering in a language that made the blood in my ears fizz.
I headed for the midway, where the tents loomed large as cathedrals. The Ten-in-One—once a hub for every scam artist, psychic, and snake charmer in the tristate—was now just the main event. Its entrance was guarded by a pair of twins, identical right down to the burn marks on their cheeks. They didn’t speak, just bowed low and let me through. My feet stuck on the entry mat, which turned out to be a tangle of living worms, but I kicked free and kept moving.
Inside was heat and noise and the shimmer of a thousand tiny flames. The room had been transformed into a throne room, Hell’s version of Versailles, only with less gold and more bone. Ribcage chandeliers dripped fat candles. The walls were draped with hides—some animal, some not—and the whole place smelled like old pennies and cheap perfume. The air thrummed, heavy with the sense that someone was watching from every angle.
The crowd parted for me. The assembled freaks, geeks, and demons of the night made space as I walked the aisle. Some bowed, others hissed, a few just grinned with mouths full ofother people’s teeth. At the far end, on a dais built from carnival wreckage and rusted bikes, sat the Flame Mistress herself.
Lilith’s true form was never the same twice, but tonight she’d gone for a kind of post-apocalyptic dominatrix look—skin pale as vodka, hair a literal fireball, eyes so black the whites had given up and left town. Her mouth was a perfect red bow, and when she smiled, the temperature in the tent spiked ten degrees. At her feet, the ringmaster slumped, head lolled to one side, strings of drool catching fire as they hit the floor. He wasn’t dead, but he was close enough to smell it.
“Jasmine,” Lilith purred, stretching my name out until it covered the entire room. “You made it. I was starting to think you’d changed your mind.”
I felt every eye in the tent on me, each one a mosquito bite just beneath the skin. My brand tingled at the attention, but the real heat came from the place where the bond to Torch ran. I wondered if he could feel it, wherever he was. I hoped not.
I took three steps forward, then knelt. Not out of deference, but because I was pretty sure my legs wouldn’t hold. Lilith grinned wider.
“So formal. You never knelt for me before, dear. Not even at the beginning.”
“Times change,” I said, keeping my eyes fixed on the burn pattern in the rug. “You wanted me. I’m here.”
She laughed, the sound rolling over the crowd like a cloud of stinging bees. “What a good girl you are. Did you bring your little soldier, too?”
“No,” I lied, though part of me knew the bond would drag him here, one way or another.
Lilith’s gaze sharpened. “Stand up.”
I did. She swept down the steps with impossible grace, heels clicking on the metal and bone. She circled me, close enough that I could smell the ozone on her breath.
“Let’s see it,” she said, voice velvet-wrapped razors.
I hesitated, then slipped my shirt down to reveal the shoulder. The skin was clear, the mark almost gone. Lilith’s eyes narrowed.
“Clever,” she hissed. “You always did have a knack for loopholes. But you know what happens to those who try to game the system.”
She reached out, one nail tracing the ghost of the brand. The pain came back, sharp as the first time, but I didn’t flinch. I wanted her to see the difference. I wanted her to know she hadn’t won yet.
She smiled, then turned to the crowd. “She’s grown, hasn’t she?” Lilith shouted, and the freaks bayed their approval. “Even now, she tries to defy me. But there is no defiance in Hell. Only delay.”
The ringmaster groaned, tried to crawl up the steps. Lilith snapped her fingers, and he froze, eyes rolling back in his head. She flicked her gaze at me.
“You know why I summoned you here, don’t you?”
I nodded, feeling the words coming even before she said them.
“You’re the battery,” Lilith said, all pretense of affection gone. “The link. The bridge. You and your little club boy—two halves of a new chain. I want it. I need it.”
She leaned in, lips at my ear. “But it’s not complete. Not yet. You need him here. Together. Otherwise, you’re just a dead circuit.”
The crowd jeered, but I barely heard it over the sound of my own heart detonating. All this time, I’d thought the sacrifice would be enough. That my death—my surrender—would be the end. But it was just another opening, another crack in the wall for her to slither through.
Lilith stepped back, firelight blazing in her hair. “Bring him,” she commanded. “Or I will bring the city down around you both.”
She turned to the ringmaster, snapping her fingers again. The man jerked upright, eyes vacant, then let out a howl that shook the whole tent.
“Find him,” Lilith ordered. “Drag him here. Alive.”
