Torchlighters

by Megan R Miller

  Lissel and Rorik, sitting together on the back porch and laughing.

  There was a loose plank in his wall and a rolled up canvas that held a picture of Samael, as well. He rarely felt bold enough to get it out and look, but he remembered the lines. Nights spent painting it in secret. That compartment had a shoebox full of horded snacks, as well.

  “I’ll be back,” Rorik shouted. The door shut behind him as he walked. Corvin watched him from his window, his boots leaving tracks in the snow. It was really now or never.

  He tongued at the crack in his lip. Maybe if she wanted him to be a better son she shouldn’t have hit him.

  He slipped down the stairs. The third one down cracked when you stepped on it, so he skipped it entirely. His hands clutched the railing and he walked along the settled part of the steps.

  The living room was empty. He could hear his parents talking in the kitchen. He waited for his father’s grumble, the precursor to his mother’s whipcrack of a raised voice, and moved into the entryway.

  Rorik had her in the basement. Because of course he did.

  The woman’s wrist had been rubbed raw where it was shackled to the radiator. Rorik had taken her shoes. The swelling had gone down a little and he could see her eyes mistrustfully staring up at him.

  “Hang tight,” he said. He slipped a bobby pin out of his pocket; he’d stolen it from the bathroom the night before and wiggled it until the bent part broke.

  She withdrew from him as he approached and he held up his hands.

  “I’m Corvin,” he said. “I’m going to let you out. Rorik’s gone.”

  “There’s a foot of snow out there,” she said, dubiously.

  “You can take my coat,” he said. He eyed her feet and slipped his shoes off. “I don’t think I’ll be able to get your shoes back but these should get you home.”

  He didn’t want to risk going back up the stairs. She furrowed her brow at him as he reached out for her wrist, and the sharp intake of breath she made when the metal rubbed against the red shiny part of her wrist made him flinch. A cuff’s lock wasn’t hard to spring.

  “My coat is the green one on the hanger on the landing,” he said. “I don’t know how long Rorik is going to be gone but you want to move fast.”

  She didn’t have to be told twice. She put his shoes on; she was swimming in them but she got to her feet. Every step she took was tense and defensive. She expected him to do something, to attack her. She was ready to defend herself and unwilling to sit there and do nothing. She eyed Corvin for a moment as she reached the bottom of the stairs.

  “Why?” she asked.

  I’m a better man than Sam, he thought. I know what this feud has taken from all of us. I can’t look you in the eye and then let Rorik cut you into pieces.

  “I want to make my mother suffer,” he said, flatly. “Go before she catches you.”

  And she did.

  The fight with Callum had left him heated and in need of a walk elsewhere.

  He wasn’t wearing Torchlighter red when he entered the bar, but everyone knew Samael Trezza by his silver hair. He looked like a seraph’s offspring in every way; high cheekbones, clear skin, pale eyes, white hair. He was too pretty to be mistaken for anyone else.

  At his place at the bar, Corvin caught Sam’s eyes through the mirror behind it, and his expression flickered between shock, then horror, then its usual hard stoicism.

  The skittering of chairs over tile filled the room as several men in yellow got to their feet. Corvin didn’t turn his head as he raised his hand for them to halt. His bar stool screeched as he pushed it back and hopped to his feet, his bottle still between his fingers.

  “Shut up and sit down, he’s mine,” Corvin said. “Out of respect for the establishment, we’ll take this outside.”

  A few of the men in yellow started to follow and Corvin shut them down with a withering look.

  “The hell did I just say?” he asked. There was a hesitance around the room, and the men began to back down. Corvin shoved the door open, his olive hand against the frosted glass, and walked outside.

  The narrow brick street was cool in the night air. The second the door shut, Corvin rounded on him.

  “What are you doing here, Sam?” he snapped. “The rule was I never saw you. What are you doing coming looking for me in public? What are we going to tell them now? There are witnesses.”

  “We don’t have to tell them anything,” Sam said. “I came here to parley with you. There always has to be room for civil talk or none of us are ever going to get anything done. So you tell them I came here to talk to you and clear you of what happened to Callum.”

  “Is that why you’re here?” Corvin asked. His dark eyes crashed over him, too much in the wisp light for a moment.

  “No,” Sam said. “I needed to talk to you.”

  “That’s what you said before,” Corvin said.

  “We were friends once, do you remember that?” Sam asked. Corvin started walking, taking a deep drink from his beer bottle and falling into step with Sam. “Saw each other every day kind of friends, not ‘whenever we can catch a minute and no one can prove we did it on purpose’?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “You know I do, you’re only asking me that as an emotional sucker punch. You’re about to ask me for something, aren’t you?”

  “When did we get this petty?” Sam asked.

  “When we grew up and realized we weren’t always going to have the cafeteria at school to cover us,” Corvin said. He drank the last of his beer and turned a corner. The alleys in Daelan City were infamous for being convoluted to every other City-State in Mistriev. Easy to get lost in. Easy if they wanted a conversation. “You know the rules. We get seen together we get screwed over one way or another. There just isn’t a way around it.”

  “I think that’s bullshit,” Sam said. Corvin paused in his steps and turned around to face him, then.

  “Bullshit, is it?” Corvin asked. “Bullshit can get one of us shot and killed? Bullshit took your brother out? Bullshit made you stab two of my guys and leave them dead in an alley? I knew those men, Sammy.”

  Corvin’s mouth stumbled around a tongue that had grown too thick and heavy with alcohol.

  “I know,” Sam said, softly. Corvin’s face was profile to him, dark hair falling into his eyes. Sam wanted to reach out and brush it back. “I know, I’m sorry.”

  “If you were anyone else,” Corvin said.

  Sam furrowed his brow.

  “What happened to your face?” Sam asked, reaching out to brush the split part of Corvin’s lower lip. Corvin brushed his hand away.

  “Fist fight,” he said. “Don’t act like you’ve never been in one.”

  “I don’t want this to come to war,” Sam said. “Please, can we talk this out? There has to be something we can do to stop this. If we don’t, the city will suffer for it.”

  “Fine,” Corvin said. “Fine, we’ll figure something out. Shit, Sammy, this is a mess.”

  Sam was going to respond, was getting ready to say something when Corvin stood up straight and his eyes narrowed. He slammed the butt of his beer bottle sidelong against the dumpster behind him and the shattered points gleamed.

  “What the—” Sam started.

  Corvin shoved him down by the neck and for a second Sam was sure that broken glass was going to go right into his throat. Instead, Corvin used that hand to get himself leverage and leapt over him. By the time Sam had whipped around, there was blood on the alley floor, someone else standing there, and the two of them were grappling each other.

  Corvin had a broken beer bottle. The masked and hooded man had a dagger with a glowing glyph on it. Sam didn’t bother drawing his knife; he pulled seraph’s fire into his hand and grabbed the man with the dagger by the shoulder, searing him through his jacket.

  He whipped around, whispering a word that resonated through the alley venomously and Sam felt his fire begin to flicker out. Corvin jammed his broken glass into eye hole of the man’s
mask.

  This time, the syllable he uttered was a horrible scream. There was another moment of struggle, Corvin grasping after the man, before he dropped the dagger and ran, leaving the alley silent once again.

  “Shit,” Corvin breathed.

  “Are you okay?” Sam asked, turning to face him. Corvin shook his head, then nodded.

  “I don’t—I’m fine, stop fussing, I wasn’t hurt,” he said. “He was after you.”

  Sam looked at the dagger on the ground and his heart clenched.

  “It really wasn’t you,” he said.

  “What?” Corvin asked.

  “My brother was killed by a dagger like this,” Sam said, holding it up. “Would any of your men have come at me while I was walking with you? I don’t think they would. So it couldn’t have been your family, could it?”

  “I guess I understand why you thought it was,” Corvin said. “To be honest I…”

  Sam looked at him.

  “I kind of thought it was too,” Corvin said, staring at the dagger and unable to meet Sam’s eyes. “My mother has been in a storm for weeks, even before Callum. I hated the idea that she might have been the one to do this but it seemed so likely…”

  “You didn’t have to save me,” Sam said. “You could have saved yourself a lot of trouble if you’d let me die.”

  “Shut up,” Corvin said, smirking a little as he looked up at Sam. “You and I both know I wouldn’t have.”

  Sam adjusted his grip on the dagger.

  “I’m going to have to take this,” he said. “It’s my evidence. This is going to convince my parents to call this whole thing off. Do you think you can work on your family?”

  “I will,” Corvin said. “I will do my best.”

  Sam smiled. Corvin smiled back. They both knew this situation didn’t get better from here, but for a moment, they could allow themselves to believe it just might.

  There was a moment, a flicker where Sam wanted to reach out and touch the side of Corvin’s face. He knew where it would lead. Instead, he turned and walked away.

  Sam went to Callum’s room instead of his own that night and walked in without knocking.

  “Cal, we have a problem,” Sam said.

  Callum was lying on his bed with a horned mask on the bedspread beside him, his face dour, while the long-tailed imp rifled through a paper bag of wrapped candies on the desk. She was surrounded by a flurry of wrappers and only appeared to be creating more.

  “You bet we do. Candy is the only thing that shuts her up,” Cal said, “I can’t get rid of her. We have a laundry list of problems, though, and as far as I can figure Tixi isn’t one. Why, what did you find out?”

  Sam held up the dagger and Callum sat bolt upright in his bed.

  “Holy hell, Sammy, where did you get that?” he asked.

  “A man tried to bury it in my back tonight,” he said, setting it on the bed.

  “But they’re killing cambion,” Callum said.

  “Apparently they’re killing Nephilim too, now,” Sam said. Corvin had imp’s blood, but he’d never manifested any of their powers. “There’s not a man in this city with any inkling of the underground that doesn’t know who I am on sight. It’s well known that I’ve got seraph’s blood. This is a game changer.”

  “What do we do about it?” Callum asked. “I have people I need to report to, but I can’t—oh, hells, Tixi.”

  She looked up from the paper bag, a sticky caramel piece half between her teeth as her startled glowing yellow eyes fixed on Callum.

  “Can you get a message to Rhys for me?” Callum asked.

  “I might be enticed to do a thing like that for another bag,” she said.

  “I’ll give you two if you can take the news to Tess as well,” Callum said. “You tell them they’re hunting nephilim now, that the ritual isn’t going to be over just because they run out of demons.”

  “They’re going to want to know how I know that,” Tixi said.

  “Don’t lie,” Callum said, “but don’t tell too much truth either. You say a survivor came and told me. You don’t say who the survivor was. I’ll throw in a third bag for your discretion.”

  Tixi made a pleased sound.

  “Yes, boss,” she said, and disappeared in a rush of air and a flurry of papers. She was gone before he could get any more specific with his instructions.

  “Sammy,” Callum said, turning to face him, “are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Sam said. “Someone had my back.”

  “I should have been around to do that,” Callum said.

  “Not tonight,” Sam said. “Tonight I had to go alone. It was personal.”

  “What kind of personal?” Callum asked. Sam would have bet he was thinking blood shed.

  “The kind that you don’t ask about because it’s fucking personal,” Sam said. “Those details don’t matter. What does, is that we have this dagger and we know they’re looking for nephilim. We can’t keep up this charade now, we have to tell Mom and Dad. This isn’t funny anymore. I’m not the only one in danger here, Ely is too. She’s Seraph as much as I am and they didn’t get me.”

  “But they think they got me,” Callum said.

  “I know, that’s exactly what the problem is,” Sam said.

  “No, listen to me for a second,” Callum said. “They might go to ground, sure, but it’s the least of our worries if they do. Now, they find out they didn’t kill me, they go out and kill another halfbreed instead and actually do get whatever soul they need to fuel this little ritual of theirs. They think I’m dead and as long as that stays true they’re not going to try to replace my soul they’re just going to miscast the whole thing.”

  “Has it occurred to you,” Sam said, “that if they do that it might turn out even worse than it would have if they did it properly?”

  “There’s as much a chance it just won’t go off,” Callum said. “If they find out I’m alive that’s going to be really dangerous for us and the rest of the city.”

  “So we tell Mom and Dad to keep their mouths shut about it. It wouldn’t be the first time,” Sam said.

  “And they’d act differently,” Callum said. “They start acting like nothing is wrong and either they’re going to look weak or people are going to get suspicious and at this point the former is almost worse because of everything that’s happening.”

  Sam sighed and dropped into the desk chair.

  “Callum,” he said, “I’m hearing you but—”

  “But nothing,” Callum said. “A few more days.”

  “The Gaters didn’t do this,” Sam said.

  Callum furrowed his brow.

  “What?” he asked. “I know they were involved.”

  “The Gate Street Players didn’t do this. The man that came at me I’m reasonably sure wasn’t even one of theirs and if we’re at war with them, openly in the streets, or if our parents unleash what they are planning on unleashing, we’re going to end up in huge trouble. Open war is never good for anyone. No one benefits in the long run.”

  “What makes you think they didn’t do it?” Callum asked. “How can you be so sure that wasn’t one of their guys? You can take your colors off, Sam.”

  How was he supposed to say ‘Corvin Verida told me’? Of course Corvin would say that.

  “I’m just sure,” Sam said. “I need you to trust me.”

  “And I need you to trust me when I say I can’t change courses just yet,” Callum said. “Just let me take it a little bit farther. Just around the next corner and then we can tell Mom and Dad. The Nightingales said that it was a Gater holding the knife when I went down.”

  His chest felt tight.

  “You said that three corners ago,” Sam said, but furrowed his brow and looked back up at Callum.

  “I never did,” Callum said. “But I’m so close now, Sam. So close and there’s so much to touch base on. Please, just one more stretch.”

  Sam sighed.

  “Last time,” he said. “I’m serio
us if you try to back out this next time I’m just going to tell them.”

  “I won’t,” Callum said. “I promise I won’t, just give me a little longer and we’ll figure this out.”

  “Did the Nightingales really tell you that?” Sam asked.

  “Swear on my life,” Callum said. Something in his expression softened, then. “But they could have been hired, it isn’t like they never take side work.”

  “I’d have hoped you would have told me,” Sam said.

  “I know,” Callum said. “I was just…kind of worried. I was worried that I’d tell you and you’d go the way Mom and Dad would and just insist we take the fight to them.”

  “I would never,” Sam said. “I don’t want to fight with them, Callum.”

  He was afraid his voice was telling too much, in that moment, but if Callum noticed he made no sign of it.

  Augury was sitting at the foot of his bed with a book open in her lap, her firestorm of red hair pulled over one shoulder exposing the freckled nape of her neck on the side nearest to him. She wasn’t looking at him. Her eyes were on her research right now.

  “I thought so,” she said, sighing. “I have a theory but you’re not going to want to hear it.”

  “Lay it on me,” he said, shifting his weight and turning to look at her. The bed creaked beneath him.

  “I think they’re trying to summon something,” she said, looking up at him. Her blue eyes practically glowed as they caught his.

  “Wouldn’t the thing they’d be summoning be looking for fresh souls?” Barghest asked, folding his arms.

  “Imps and afrite? Typically yeah,” she said. “Most demons, even. But what if it’s a different kind of creature entirely?”

  “What, like an undocumented species of demon?” he asked, raising a brow. He could see the reflection of it in his peripheral vision, in the mirror above his dresser. He avoided turning his eyes to look and kept them on Augury’s.

  “No,” she said, “like not a demon at all.”

  She was right, he didn’t want to hear that. He exhaled through his nose, and conceded.

  “Aberrant abilities do crop up occasionally,” he admitted. “It’s taken us too long already to figure out how to deal with demons, and heaven forbid we end up with an angel on the loose.”