Torchlighters

by Megan R Miller

  So why did he hear footsteps behind him?

  Sam whipped around just in time to catch a blow with his forearm. The man was holding a gun, but he hadn’t fired it. Sam barely had time to register that before he punched out hard at the stranger’s stomach and took a step back.

  Let this flame light your vigil.

  His arms ignited to the elbows. Punching and knives was fine for a street fight, but he wasn’t messing around with a gun.

  “What’s your problem?” Sam asked, lifting a flaming hand. His silver angel’s flame cast light on the stranger’s face.

  It wasn’t a stranger at all. It was Corvin Verida.

  He was, as always, the same too-pink-to-be-quite-human man with the same inky hair and eyes as black as the sea at night. His jaw was set, and his brow furrowed. He lifted his gun and pointed it at Sam with a shaking hand.

  “What, you’re gonna shoot me here?” Sam asked, narrowing his eyes. “I thought you didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “My mother,” Corvin said. His hand clenched harder around the handle of his gun as he dropped his eyes. The second he stopped looking, Sam had an opening. If Corvin had been anyone else he’d have taken it right then and lit him up like a Gaian candle.

  “Your mother heard some of her guys went down and thinks it was me, right?” Sam asked.

  “How would you know if you hadn’t done it?” Corvin demanded, raising his eyes.

  “I did,” Sam said. He didn’t look away.

  We’re not monsters, we just speak their language.

  “I thought they might know something about what happened to my brother,” he said. “I just meant to ask at first, and things got out of hand.”

  That wasn’t a lie. Things had gotten out of hand because of Callum. He couldn’t be forward about that. It wasn’t his to tell.

  “Things got out of hand and two men ended up dead and she can’t let that shit go without answer, Sam,” Corvin said. “She sent Lissel after your father, and me after you. What do I do about that?”

  Sam let the flames around his arms go out. He took a step forward and Corvin tensed, but Sam didn’t stop until he had a hand around Corvin’s wrist, pushing the gun’s barrel down to face the dock. He didn’t take it from him.

  “You’re going to do what you need to do,” Sam said, “but you’re also going to do what you can do and I don’t think you can shoot me.”

  Corvin met his eyes again and the look in them screamed the truth. Sam was right.

  “If we weren’t friends,” Corvin said.

  We aren’t friends.

  “If we weren’t friends one of us would die here,” Sam said. “If my family knew you came at me with a gun and I let you walk, I imagine they’d be a little upset. So you go back and tell her you never found me, and I never saw you. It’s better that way.”

  “I never wanted to in the first place,” Corvin spat.

  “Then why did you come?” Sam asked, folding his arms. Corvin glared. There was a moment of silence between them, before Corvin turned on his heel and walked away.

  Sam watched him go in the darkness, and listened to the waves lap beneath the docks. His absence left a void between them. The very second Corvin was out of his presence, Sam missed him.

  When he arrived home, Joey was standing in the foyer pacing back and forth, his face drawn and caught somewhere between concern and black fury.

  “Where have you been?” Joey asked, rounding on Sam.

  “I took a walk along the dock to clear my head,” Sam said. He was tired. Too tired to argue right now.

  “Are you aware the Hellwatch just came looking for you?” Joey asked. That brought Sam up short. “Captain wants a word, won’t take no for an answer. I got home to find Ophelia trying to calm herself down from it.”

  “Dad,” Sam said, bringing Joey back down for a moment. “What did he want?”

  “You already know the answer to that, don’t you?” Joey asked. They spent a moment looking at one another, and Sam finally decided he couldn’t lie. Not about this.

  “They found the bodies I left in the alley,” Sam said, finally.

  Joey sighed.

  “Damn,” he said. “I was almost hoping it hadn’t been you. Alright, we’re going to down to the station to have a word with the biggest dog in the kennel. The rules are simple. You don’t admit to shit, and you don’t give him a reason to come here again. Are you hearing me?”

  “I am,” Sam said. “I guess it’s business, right? I was going to need to learn how to lie to the authorities eventually anyway?”

  If Joey heard the undercurrent of bitterness in Sam’s voice he made no sign of it.

  “It’ll be easy, it’s not like you’ve never had to lie to me or your mother,” Joey said, snorting.

  That cut through Sam like the bullet Corvin didn’t fire. He tried a laugh and kept his eyes on the carpet. Let him keep thinking it was about the dead men, because that was easier. Murder was easier.

  What did that say about him?

  “Yeah,” Sam said. “Can I be excused? I just need to sleep and if we’re going to the station sometime in the next couple of days I’m going to need the rest.”

  “Go,” Joey said. “Try not to kill anyone else until I give the signal. There will be plenty of that to go around when we find the proof your mother needs to get the fire started.”

  Sam nodded.

  “Sammy?” Joey asked. Sam paused at the bottom of the steps and looked back at him. “I love you.”

  “Love you too, Dad,” Sam said, and disappeared onto the second floor.

  Martin Logan was not typically a drinker. There were no glasses in his desk. Instead, amber whisky filled the coffee mug on his desk to the halfway point. He couldn’t even bring himself to take another swig of it.

  The clock on the corner ticked softly, glyphs behind the hands casting a broken glow on the morgue floor. She would be here any minute now, and he would tell her everything.

  He’d hoped the alcohol would make him brave enough to leave but all it had done was burn his throat and made him feel a little sick.

  “Martin,” her voice said. He could see her outline behind the doorway. The liquid in the coffee cup shook as he brought it to his lips again and forced a gulp. It tasted like fruit and cough syrup.

  “I’m here,” he said. Lena slipped inside and shut the door behind her.

  “You had the Hellwatch back today,” she said.

  “They think it’s the Veil,” he said. “There was some talk about it being shoeshiner related. No one suspects you.”

  “And have you heard from Callum?” she asked. She sauntered over to his desk and sat on the edge, reaching out to touch his chin with one fingertip and tilt his face up to her.

  “No,” he said. That smile was so beautiful and so intimidating. He tried, he really did, to keep it down, but the words came to his lips unbidden. “I did meet his sister.”

  Lena’s smile twisted and she moved a little closer to him.

  “Tell me, Martin, what brought that about?” she asked.

  “She’s looking for old roads under the city,” he said. “But she isn’t looking for your haunts, Lena, she’s trying to get at the Gate Street Players.”

  “Alright,” Lena said. “Help her.”

  His stomach turned.

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, ma’am, I can do that.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Stars

  “I know there is a lot of kerfuffle going around about why the Serene and Orthodox churches hate each other so much. To hear them tell it, the Serene branch eats babies and the Orthodox church burns orphanages, but lucky for you, the Voice of the Night has you covered with some genuine shadows spun from the solid truth.

  Listen up. The biggest difference is Seren Ashfair. A long time ago, back when there was no wasteland, a young woman decided it was alright to mate with an angel and managed to get out of it with her mind in tact.

  Folks, do not try this at home,
the sanity rate for people who have kids with angels is abysmally low. But supposedly Seren Ashfair did it.

  Anyway, the Church of the Veil was just one church at that point, and she was the crux of their split. See, the Orthodox branch think she’s a heretic and that there’s no excuse to interbreed with anything that doesn’t come from this plane—and sometimes they get pretty iffy about humans from the various isles interbreeding too.

  And the Serene branch? Well, listen to that name and take a wild guess. They think she was a real prophet.

  Personally? I think these people have been dead for hundreds of years and the fact that we’re still fighting about it is just crackpot. I guess some people have stronger minds than others. Or maybe she was a nephil herself and no one knew it.

  Whatever the case may be, they still both honor the ancients and at the end of the day nephilim and cambion are here to stay. So you can do the math.”

  Callum clutched the brickwork outside and rapped on Sam’s window. A moment later, there was a noise as the window cracked open and Callum pulled himself inside. His muscles always shook when he got out from a climb like that. Their bedrooms were on the third floor, and it never looked like it was going to be as tiring as it actually was by the time he reached the top.

  “I need an opinion on something,” he said, sitting on the foot of Sam’s bed.

  Samael’s room was cleaner than Callum’s but it looked like someone lived here, at least. The carpet was white and clean; Sam didn’t eat in here when he could avoid it or it would be stained all over the place. Cal knew that from experience. The bed had a dark green spread and pillowcases and Sam was currently sitting at his desk, where he’d returned from letting Callum in.

  “You should definitely change before. That outfit is atrociously wrinkled,” Sam said, dryly.

  “Not what I meant,” Callum said, sticking a tongue out at his brother. He pulled the note from the inside of his jacket and passed it over. “Someone’s got some information on my investigation. Lena said she’d send people my way if she found anyone, and apparently she did. Set me up the meeting and everything.”

  “What do you need my opinion on?” Sam asked, leaning back in his seat with a light creaking sound. “Whether or not you should listen to the crazy woman who told you not to tell your family you were alive?”

  “Whether or not to go and see this person,” Cal said, doing his best to reclaim the conversation.

  Sam snorted.

  “What?”

  “Cal,” Sam said, turning his chair to face him, “you have a strange letter on a piece of paper and that’s all you have in terms of leads right now. Aside from what the Nightingales told you, which, by the way, you still haven’t shared with me. So yes, you need to go. You need to be careful, and you need to be prepared to walk into an ambush because you cannot trust this woman as far as you can throw her, but you need to go. I’m going with you though.”

  “The note says come alone,” Cal said.

  “Yeah, but they’re not going to see me,” he said. “I’ll find somewhere to perch with a gun and give you cover fire if you need it. The observatory is surrounded by windows, right? So this person you’re meeting? They probably picked it so they could have a sniper, too.”

  Sam was leaning back in his seat and his eyes were pinned on Callum. He looked completely serious.

  “That is typically what an observatory does, yeah,” Cal said. He crossed his legs on the bed. Sam frowned. Callum kicked his shoes off and then sat cross legged again and Sam nodded, appeased. “What have you been up to?”

  “Oh,” Sam said, straightening. “Oh, it’s funny you should ask me that, because you’ll never guess what just happened.”

  “You found a leprechaun rifling through your sock drawer?” Cal asked.

  “The Captain of the Hellwatch came here looking for me about the mess we left in that alley around Gate Street and Mom and Dad are a nervous wreck about that too,” Sam said. “When are you going to give this up and tell them you’re alive, Cal?”

  “Let me do this meeting,” Callum said. “I’ll talk to my new informant, find out what they have to say. It might lead us to closing this case nice and easy.”

  “You made a mistake,” Sam said. “And a mess. You worried our parents and you’re worrying me because I’m the one having to clean your messes up now. Dad thinks I killed two guys.”

  “I bet my bottom dollar he’s not even mad,” Callum said. “In fact he’s probably proud of you.”

  “About the bodies, no, but he was pretty furious about the Hellwatch captain finding them and coming around asking for me,” Sam said. “And just because he’s not mad doesn’t mean that I’m not. I have to go talk to the Hellwatch, now. This is probably going on my record.”

  “Sam,” Cal said. “Are you kidding me? Your record? How could they even think of putting a crime lord’s son on record with anything untoward. Your delicate sensibilities!”

  Cal put the back of his wrist against his forehead dramatically, then opened one eye to gauge Sam’s expression. It was sour.

  “This isn’t a joke,” Sam said, “and it’s not a game. Fine. We go. We talk to your contact, or you do and I have the shotgun ready just in case something goes wrong, and then we leave and if it’s not huge and if it’s not necessary to keep doing this at that point you just…damn it Cal, just come clean. If this woman tries to hurt you or do something about it, we can take care of it.”

  Callum took a moment to consider Samael’s words. He was probably right. Callum still didn’t want to disappoint Lena, the very idea still turned his stomach, but it had been long enough now that he needed a lead. And he could spin this right. He could fix it so that he could check out this contact then come back to Samael later and make it look like everything was on course. Maybe Lena had something, too.

  “If it looks like this isn’t going anywhere, I swear I will,” Cal said. “Enough?”

  “For now,” Sam said. He rubbed the sides of his face with his thumb and index finger and for a moment, Cal just watched him and the weariness there. This was taxing Sam. It had to have been taxing their parents. So, maybe Sam was right. Maybe he did this one more thing and then he turned around and finally let them know. Maybe he was being stupid. Then Sam sat up and looked Cal in the eye. “Do you remember when Dad first took you to see a burning?”

  Callum furrowed his brow. The question pushed him out of his thoughts.

  “Why are you asking me about that right now?” he asked.

  “Because I was thinking about it,” Sam said. “I can remember everything about the night he took me. I don’t remember yours quite as well.”

  “It was my first one,” Cal said, leaning back on his hands on the bed. “You’d done it a few times at that point, right? So it wouldn’t stick with you, you knew what to expect.”

  “I remember you,” Sam said, “just not the burning. I don’t even remember who it was.”

  “It was the last Watcher,” Cal said. “Remember how Uther Haywood brought her in chains and offered her to Dad as a peace offering? Said he didn’t want him to think he was muscling in on our territory but wanted permission to bring some product in through the docks? Her hair was down to the backs of her knees and it went up like a cobweb all around her head. We saw what her skull looked like.”

  “Yeah,” Sam said, exhaling between his lips in a quiet hiss. “Yeah, I remember that now. I remember how excited you were before we actually got there and how you blanched when the smell hit.”

  “I don’t remember it like that,” Cal said. “I remember you nearly throwing up.”

  “I’d been doing it for years by then, that was you,” he said, smirking.

  “Remember Ely’s first burn?” Cal asked.

  They both stopped smiling.

  “She stood and watched,” Sam said. “She never looked away, she didn’t pale, she didn’t retch.”

  “She asked Dad if she could light the fire next time,” Cal said.

&nb
sp; “She did not,” Sam said.

  “She did.” Cal said. “You just didn’t hear it. Dad said he didn’t see any harm in it.”

  “I bet Mom did,” Sam said.

  “That’s why Ely hasn’t lit the pyre yet,” Cal said.

  They shared an awkward laugh together, and Cal sighed.

  “Alright,” he said. “We’ll talk to this informant, and if that doesn’t work out I’ll tell Mom and Dad the truth. We can figure it out like a family. Better?”

  “I’ll hold you to it,” Samael said.

  Sam shifted forward in his seat and held out a hand. Cal gripped his forearm tightly and gave a nod. He’d given his word. He hadn’t defined what ‘that’ was.

  Maybe it was flimsy logic, but it would serve for now. He just needed time, and he’d bought that for himself.

  Violent things didn’t usually happen in Scholar’s Square. Rich people came here to get their education. They came to learn how to properly summon and become licensed to do it, so that they could power the city and make money hand over fist in a way the poor people never could have hoped to manage. They kept it this way on purpose. They made the square nice, and they hung it over people’s heads as an ideal. If you were poor, you should have studied harder. Become a summoner. And if you did, but you couldn’t afford the academy, poor you, you should have done it legally.

  It was absolutely saturated with the aristocracy and the demons they summoned to attend them. So it didn’t exactly attract the criminal element in droves.

  For Ely, who had grown up with the Torchlighters and had a dizzying intellect in her own right if she did say so herself, the sight of a gun wasn’t that unusual. The sight of it here was what made her pause and listen.

  “She said I had to,” the voice said in a panic. “She’s going to get rid of me unless she needs me for something.”

  “You have more time,” the man against the wall said. Light flashed off his glasses and she realized it was Martin. “It’s okay. What does she want?”

  She used the man cocking his gun as a cover for the sound of her cocking her own. He was doing it as a threat and probably didn’t mean to actually fire. His mistake.