Torchlighters

by Megan R Miller

  “You crazy fuck!” the man shouted. Callum rammed his forehead into the man’s crotch and that was enough to get him the leverage he needed to get out from underneath him and roll to his feet. Blood coursed, hot and fresh down the side of his face.

  He grabbed the man’s knife on the way up, holding it in a reverse grip. His own was in a sheath along his calf, lying flat under the fabric of his dress pants.

  Out of his peripheral vision, he could see Sam backing up and tugging up his pants leg to get at his own knife. Sam ducked. Cal turned on his heel and drove his knife into the side of Sam’s opponent’s neck, twisted, and dragged it back out. Blood came out in a spray over the bricks and Cal took a step back out of the way. Flames licked up his arm, just out of reach of catching his shirt sleeve.

  Sam moved out of Cal’s vision for a moment and there was a hard impact. The man in front of Cal had his hand clasped around a hemorrhaging hole in his neck, and Cal glanced back to see Sam holding the other man to the wall with his forearm. Sam’s knife disappeared into the man’s torso and he took a couple of steps back.

  The first man fell, and then the second started shouting incoherently as he held his fingers against the hole in his stomach. Cal stopped the shouting by driving his own blade through his windpipe. He dispelled his fire.

  “Holy shit, Cal,” Sam said. Out of his peripheral vision, Cal could see the blood drain from Sam’s face.

  “He was going to call down the entire operation on us,” Cal said.

  “We came here for information,” Sam said, turning to face Cal with wide eyes.

  “These shmucks wouldn’t have known anything,” Cal said. He realized almost as soon as he said it what the problem was. He could have let them go, he didn’t have to jump.

  Two less Gaters.

  “Callum,” Sam said. His hands clutched Cal’s shoulders and turned him until they were face to face. “I let you try, this is over now.”

  “Wait,” Cal said, tugging back out of his hands and moving to the corpse. Sam reached after him and his hands closed into the open air. Cal dropped to a kneel beside the body in the middle of the alley and began to poke through his pockets.

  “Cal,” Sam said. “Whatever you’re doing, you need to hurry up. This woman isn’t worth it. I know you say she saved you but that doesn’t mean you owe her anything. What is she holding over your head?”

  Footsteps echoed over the end of the alleyway. Some voices shouted in the distance. His hand came out of the pocket with a crumpled wad of two-sigil notes and a pocket knife. Cal dropped the body and moved to the other one.

  “I am hurrying,” he said, ignoring the latter half of Sam’s statement. He was right, on some level Callum knew that, but it felt so complicated and he just didn’t want to have to deal with hashing this out right now. “Watch the end of the alley, we’ll get out just as soon as we can.”

  A half-finished pack of cigarettes. A folded scrap of paper. An ink pen.

  “Cal, now,” Sam said, pulling Cal by the arm to his feet. Cal glanced down the mouth of the alley to see shadows bent along the wall.

  Cal looked at the ladder and was about to move, when the telltale rush of air hit the alleyway and Sam’s ashen wings cast a shadow on the wall across from them. The next thing Cal knew, they were both airborne and they’d landed on the roof by the time the Hellwatch poured into the alley.

  Sam started to move. Cal followed him, pocketing the cigarettes and the pen and fumbling with the piece of paper to get it unfolded.

  “I think we can both agree that we’re done with this,” Sam said, stopping at the edge of the next roof over. He faced Cal and folded his arms, his wings disappearing in a flurry of feathers. “We’ll go home and explain the situation to our parents and then they can help us figure out what’s going on. Unless you want to tell me what this woman is blackmailing you with.”

  Cal stared at the piece of paper in front of him and glanced up at Sam.

  “Or,” he said, turning the paper around in his fingers so Sam could see it, “we could keep doing what we’re doing and flush out the persons responsible before they realize I’m alive and go so far underground we never catch them.”

  Sam looked at the side of the paper that Callum had just been staring at and his brow furrowed.

  “What is that?” he asked.

  Cal’s fingers tensed against the page, holding it steady in spite of everything he was feeling at that moment.

  It caught the light, the ink bleeding through the page. The hastily drawn edges spiderwebbed out a little bit from being folded up wet, but the sigil was unmistakable.

  It was the very same one that had been on the dagger that stabbed Cal.

  “It’s a lead,” Callum said. “It’s what’s going to connect my stabbing to Gate Street.”

  The bottom drawer popped open with the soft sound of wood against wood and filled the room with the smell of fresh laundry and oak. She pressed her fingers into the folded shirts, hand creeping along the bottom of the drawer and looking for the gun that she knew was here.

  She’d seen it, the last time she was going through her parent’s drawers. Bother. She should have come sooner. She should have known he’d want it on him after what happened to Cal.

  Footsteps in the hallway brought her up short and she carefully shut the drawer so it didn’t make a sound. By then, the doorknob was turning and Elysia Trezza rolled under the bed.

  The biggest difference between her mother’s feet and her father’s were the size of them. Most women wore dainty shoes with straps and buckles, but her mother was almost always in boots unless there was a party. She complained that skirts weren’t practical, but she always looked good in a suit.

  When things got really hairy, she’d wear her old Hellwatch breastplate. Never in the house. There were rules to keep things kind of normal inside; a time and a place for war things like swords and guns and breastplates.

  “He’s probably just taking a walk,” Joey said. His silhouette’s hands held her mother’s shoulders on the wall behind them. Ophelia rested her forehead against his shoulder.

  “I can’t take this right now, Joey, not…” Her voice broke. Joey’s arms went around her waist and for a moment their shadows merged into one shape.

  “I know,” he said, “I know.”

  “I remember when he was born and how quiet he was,” she said. “I thought we were going to lose him, and then he started crying and it was like suddenly being able to breathe again. I never thought we’d lose him now. It feels ironic, after it was so hard to get him in the first place…”

  “It’s not ironic,” Joey said, and from the muffled quality of his voice he must have been speaking into her hair. “It’s fucking war.”

  Ely felt something in her blood stir at the words. Her father rarely talked about it but she’d heard his boys tell stories. She’d never seen it before.

  “You really think it will come to that?” Ophelia asked.

  “The first shots were already fired, and I won’t let that go without recourse,” he said. “They can’t just have him, it doesn’t work like that.”

  “Joey,” she said, taking a step back. Their shadows split, and Ely could see the profiles of both of their faces looking into one another. “We need to make sure we’re pointing our guns in the right direction. I know you seem sure, I know you do, but there’s more than one bloodthirsty asshole in this city.”

  “Who else could it have been? Who is it always whenever this shit happens?” he asked. His voice had taken on a growling quality under the surface. Ely didn’t share his anger.

  “And if we strike without any proof who are they going to come down on as having started this?” Ophelia asked.

  “When we’re finished there won’t be enough of them to come back at us,” he said. He sounded sure. Ely smirked slightly, riding the residual anger in her father’s voice. She loved it when he was the warlord.

  “I’m not talking about the Gate Street Players,” Ophelia sai
d.

  “What do you mean?” he asked. His brow furrowed in his voice, a part of his tone as much as the shadow of his expression on the wall.

  “I’m talking about the Hellwatch,” Ophelia said. “They aren’t going to let open war in the streets go without recourse, either.”

  “So we’ll throw the dogs a bone first,” he said.

  “How?” she asked. She stepped away from him and folded her arms, her athletically solid hourglass figure in contrast to his broad shoulders and slender hips.

  “Hell,” he said, “if we release some demons onto Gate Street the Hellwatch might take care of them for us. The Gaters. I mean, the demons too. They might even blame them.”

  “Don’t pretend you don’t want put a bullet between Vivi’s eyes yourself,” Ophelia said.

  Joey snorted.

  “I wouldn’t trust a demon or a dog to put down that bitch,” he said.

  “So we go in while the demons run amok?” Ophelia asked. “How do you propose we get by during the chaos?”

  “The Gaters have their secret ways to move in their territory,” Joey said. “We could use those. It would largely—”

  He stopped for a moment, taking a step back from her. Ely stopped breathing. For a moment, she was sure she’d been caught, but then he continued as if he hadn’t stopped at all. His voice was that of a man who had just found the solution to all of his problems.

  “Or we could release the demons into those. We start shit in the streets, they try to draw into their hidey holes and lo and behold…”

  “That would involve knowing where their holes in the wall were,” Ophelia said. “And procuring summoners to take care of that part of the plan. I know the latter can be done, that we’ve done it before, but what about their safe passages? I suppose you know where those are?”

  She didn’t sound like she thought so at all.

  “Throw enough money at the street rats and they talk,” Joey said.

  “Oh they do,” Ophelia said, “but I promise you not a one of those is going to know about the passages you’re talking about. The Torchlighters are always careful to guard their secrets from anyone not in the business of shining shoes, right? You think the Gaters are any less careful?”

  “If they were that careful they wouldn’t have fucked up this bad,” Joey said.

  “And that,” Ophelia said, “is exactly why I think it’s reasonable to doubt that they did this.”

  There was a pause between them.

  “The Gate Street Players aren’t stupid,” she said. “Believe me, Joey, if they dared touch my boy they’re going to burn for it. I will be the first one holding that torch. But not even Vivi is dumb enough to send someone after our son, knowing what it means.”

  “She didn’t have to order it to be responsible for it,” Joey said.

  “If it was one of her men,” Ophelia said.

  “Why are you so convinced it wasn’t?” Joey asked.

  “I’m not,” Ophelia said. Her voice was soft, now. “I’m not convinced of anything and that’s why I think we need to be careful here. If we fire at them there is no taking it back, and I want to make sure whoever killed our son, whoever really killed our son, goes down for it in a big way. A clean death isn’t good enough. And if I were someone else, I’d want us to think the Gaters did it.”

  “So what do we do?” he asked, shortly. “How long do we wait?”

  “We at least make a paltry effort to get some proof,” Ophelia said. “There will have been witnesses. Someone would have seen. And while we’re asking around we take steps to finding out where their little hidey holes and passages are.”

  It wasn’t a bad plan. Ely had to respect that much.

  “Get people on it while the blood’s still warm,” he said.

  Her silhouette nodded, slipped out of the door and the sound of Ophelia’s heavy boots faded down the hall. Ely waited a moment, breathing shallowly as her father didn’t move for a long time.

  His feet turned toward the bed, and the moment his knees started to bend she knew she was in trouble.

  “So what do you think?” he asked. “Good plan?”

  Ely crawled out from under the bed at the side and straightened to a cross-legged sit. His eyebrows were both arced as if there was no doubt in the world, at any point, that he was going to catch her.

  She thought for a couple of beats, about what to say to him. Some excuse, perhaps, or anything to get her out of the room. She surprised herself as the first thing out of her mouth was the truth.

  “I think you should let me find out where the passages are,” Ely said.

  “I think that sounds incredibly dangerous and I’m not losing another child to this,” he said. “I also think we should talk about this while you’re not on the floor.”

  “Dad,” she said, shifting to get to her feet. Standing made it evident how much larger he was. She was, in most ways, her father’s daughter, and that meant she was shorter than average for a woman. At sixteen, though, she wasn’t likely to grow more than her five feet and three inches. “It doesn’t have to be. I’m not suggesting sending me into Gater territory to ask questions, I have something else in mind. Will you at least hear me out?”

  “Go ahead, but it’s an uphill battle,” he said, folding his arms. The creases of his pinstriped suit folded with the motion. He was listening. Good. That’s all she would need she was sure.

  “The archives,” she said. “At the Summoner’s Academy. They have all the records there. Most of them are under lock down but if I can get into the restricted sections, the basements and sub-basements, I can find maps of pretty much every public project that we’ve ever had in Daelan City and from there it won’t be difficult to surmise what work the Gaters have done under the table. I could get an architect to work with us. Like you said to Mom, money speaks.”

  Joey sighed.

  “You know, that’s not half bad,” he said.

  “I know,” she said. She made sure every inch of her confidence could be heard in the words.

  “You get caught, what’s your alibi?” he asked.

  Her smirk faded on a dime and she brought her shoulders in to give him her best ‘lost little girl’. She had done it before, more than once.

  “I was just here touring the facilities, I’m negotiating with my parents to enroll in your medical program in the spring and someone said the restrooms were down this way. The door back there wasn’t locked and I thought I was on my way out but I just keep getting turned around…”

  Another sigh. He turned his eyes to meet hers, and watched her for a moment, considering. She let her face fall back to its natural blank, let the light out of her eyes.

  “Alright,” he said. “You’re not a little girl anymore and this seems safe enough.”

  Ely let her nervous facade fade and straightened.

  “I won’t let you down,” she said. “Can I ask for one more thing though?”

  “What is it?” Joey asked.

  “Don’t leave me out of the planning this time,” she said. “I don’t expect you to let me fight, you didn’t let Sam or Cal out to do any of that until they were at least seventeen and I get that. Nine more days. But I want to be involved in the planning. I’m good at this, and you can’t deny it. You can’t protect me from it forever.”

  “Seems like I couldn’t keep you out if I wanted to,” he said. She couldn’t help her smile in response.

  “With all due respect,” Ely said, “I don’t think you could either.”

  “I’ll work on your mother,” he said.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll just…get out of your hair here?”

  “Yeah,” he said. That one syllable spoke volumes about how tired he was. She took two steps back and then turned to leave, closing the door between them. This was a lot for him to have to carry, she knew. It was a lot for her mother, too. Whatever she could do to help.

  She ran her fingers along the wall as she walked away, taking a sharp turn into the h
all where her room, and her brothers rooms, were.

  She stayed there, her back against Callum’s door as her father’s room opened again and she heard his heavy steps fade down the hall, before she drew lock picks out of her sleeve and got to work on the door.

  She still needed that gun.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Rising Flames

  “Daelan City, you should know something. I’m committed to sharing this city’s dark underbelly with you. Every secret they want to keep shrouded in mystery. Every horrible thing they don’t want you to know?

  Well, you have every right, don’t you?

  So let’s take a second to talk about angels, because believe you me, they are not what the city wants you to think they are. They glorify them in their sermons and draw those painstaking murals of humans with feathered wings.

  It’s all hogwash, folks. The truth is if they were so benign we’d be using them for everything. No, angels are terrifying and sometimes downright horrific. From the lowliest cherub to the highest ranking seraph, believe you me, you do not want to look at one with your naked eyes.

  It might be the last thing you ever see.”

  Ophelia Trezza brushed her hands over her pants suit to smooth out the wrinkles as she strode into the warehouse. It was one of several Joey had in the dock district and the second one of the boys noticed she’d walked in, his back was straight and he was nudging the others to do the same.

  She continued to walk until her feet found the stairs, and the mezzanine, where she leaned on the railing and cleared her throat. By then, she already had everyone’s attention.

  “I’m going to need some volunteers,” she said. None of them looked surprised. “You’re all aware of the tragedy that’s befallen our family, and you’re all aware that this can’t go unrewarded in its own way. That is why I want a handful of brave souls to infiltrate Gate Street and find me some shred of evidence one way or the other. We need to know whether or not they were responsible and we need to know while the blood is still warm.”