Torchlighters

by Megan R Miller

  “What do you mean?” he asked. His brow was furrowed.

  “That night we went out to hunt a rhakshasa. I found him already engaged with a group of men in suits, and in his weakened state I managed to bring him down. Joey wanted to speak with me, and I obliged him. I was too exhausted to put up much of a fight that night. So I went. And he told me there was someone in his ranks that had called the creature down in the first place. He wanted help finding who it was. That was my job anyway, so I did. I helped.

  “That trail? It led us to the Watchers. The things they had been doing down in the catacombs before we supposedly bricked them off were bad enough that I don’t even want to repeat them, Barghest. And the Hellwatch had no idea. It was happening right beneath our feet and we never knew.”

  “And instead of bringing this information back and reporting it so that we would know,” he said, “you decided to just switch teams like that. And not tell anyone what you were doing.”

  “They had a child bound to their alter,” she said. “They carved her eyes out and left her there to bleed. They left her eyes sitting above her on a mantle as an offering for their watching god. She died there, alone in the dark. You don’t see something like that and come out unscathed. Making a report wasn’t exactly at the forefront of my mind.

  “Meanwhile, Joey did right by them. The people that got hurt. He took the time to go behind and make sure all of them got what they needed, that they were taken care of. The Hellwatch has never done that. With everything he did, and every move he made, he showed me he was a good man. One action at a time, I fell in love with him. And if I’d come back to tell you everything I’d seen…can you tell me you wouldn’t have arrested him anyway?”

  “If he didn’t want to be arrested,” Barghest said, “maybe he shouldn’t be doing things that were illegal. You cared about that once.”

  “I care about what’s right more than I care about an arbitrary list of rules a bunch of rich people wrote down to make sure they would always remain the ones in charge,” Ophelia said. “Everything about this system has stacked the odds against these people and they have had to go against the grain to protect themselves and those who don’t have it in them to break the rules. Nothing about this has been right or fair. And you know, it’s funny, but I never saw you as being on a leash until now.”

  “Rules are what make a society run. If you don’t like them, you try to change them. You don’t break them,” he said.

  “Even if people will die if you don’t?” she asked. “Who was ever going to listen to him?”

  Barghest exhaled, tight and slow.

  “And no one’s ever died because of him, I’m sure,” he said.

  “Once in a while, people come in and think everything will be fine if they help themselves to our people,” Ophelia said. “They set fires. They point guns at shopkeepers. They create victims in ways they know will never come back to haunt them in any official capacity. Showing mercy to those people or not bothering to catch them is the biggest injustice I can think of for the ones they harm. When they burn, it makes the rest think twice. It’s cruel, but it keeps our people safe. Not just the ones on the north end of town.”

  “So he only breaks the law to protect people? Never for his own gain?” Barghest asked.

  “Ultimately,” Ophelia said. “I’m not going to pretend he doesn’t have his fingers in a lot of pies, but everything he brings in goes right back into the community. If he’s going to protect them, he has to maintain power.”

  “Had you ever considered that if he and his gang joined the Hellwatch we would have enough manpower to deal with these situations?” he asked.

  “They’re all men that have been burned and worse by the law,” Ophelia said. “Our legislation doesn’t particularly care for poor people. I can’t blame them for wanting no part in that. I think you know how much of a fool’s errand that would be, anyway, not everyone takes to the structure so easily as you and I did.”

  “So what do you suggest I do, then? Just turn a blind eye to it all?” he asked.

  “There are some things that I know you can’t let go,” Ophelia said. “I think I’d lose respect for you if you did. Not that it matters, because you’ve made it abundantly clear that we’re not friends anymore.”

  “Ophelia,” he said. “You know I only get this upset whenever I care. I just…feel like maybe this is a waste of your talents.”

  “Stay in my life long enough to find out,” she said. “These past two weeks have been the most you’ve bothered to speak to me in years. It took thinking my son was dead. I know I should have told you what was happening when it started going on, but it has been over two decades. That’s a steep price for a couple weeks of silence.”

  “A couple of weeks of silence where I thought you were dead,” he said.

  There it was.

  On the other side of the fallen rocks, the rhakshasi screamed in fury. There was another impact somewhere in the distance. It all felt thousands of miles away in that moment. When she spoke next, her voice was very small.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Well I guess it all worked out fine in the end,” he said.

  “Obviously it didn’t,” she said, softly. “You’re not obligated to talk to me, Barghest. It just hurts a lot. I did what I felt like I had to do. I did what I felt was the right thing. And you just won’t hear it. Do you hate him that much, or is it me at this point?”

  The silence stretched, punctuated by impacts and gunfire.

  “I feel like I failed,” he said. “Like, had I been a better mentor, this wouldn’t…wouldn’t have been the path you’d chosen.”

  “…you’re an old fool,” she said. “You couldn’t have been a better mentor. Any idiot holding a law book can tell you what is permitted, but it takes a real moral compass to know what is right. You gave me that. You just don’t want to look at it. I picked the path that would help the most people.”

  “You know, you could have tried to talk to me, too,” he said. He wasn’t looking at her now.

  “I did,” she said. “There was always a reason, wasn’t there? Always something pressing. Like you’d rather have been looking at anything but my face. I stopped, because every time, it hurt. Seraph can’t be harmed by fire, but I know what it is to burn, now.”

  “Well it’s like you said,” he said. “Hellwatch is always busy.”

  “Was that it?” she asked. She kept her eyes on him, even though she was sure she already knew the answer.

  “Not entirely,” he admitted.

  “What, then?” she asked.

  “I cared about you, Ophelia,” he said. His hand was clenched beside his knee, the knuckles whitened. “More than I should have.”

  “You never said,” she said.

  “I thought I’d have more time,” he said.

  “Can…can you just…” she started, but her voice broke. She held up a hand as she composed herself, but the damage was done. She already sounded like the lost young woman she’d been when she came to the Hellwatch in the first place. She pressed on. “I always thought you were so committed to the rules…and those rules never would have allowed it… I guess it doesn’t matter now, but I miss you. I miss my friend. I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want to fight you.”

  He sighed.

  “Well,” he said. “Maybe this is something we could move on from.”

  There was another crash on the other side of the rubble and the foundation of the hovel they’d been trapped in shook.

  “Provided we get out of this alive,” he said.

  “Come,” she said, doing her best to stand and offering him a hand up. “It’s only a pile of rocks. We have bested worse, together.”

  “A pile of rocks with a raging rhakshasi on the other side,” he said, taking her hand. She hauled him to his feet.

  “One fight at a time,” she said. “Just like you taught me. Do you think we can trust each other long enough?”

  “Right, then,”
he said. The conviction had crept back into his voice. He looked at the rocks and Ophelia followed his gaze, straightening.

  She wasn’t sure what would be waiting for them on the other side when they finished. There was no guarantee of a victory. No guarantee of survival. That was nothing new.

  But right now, for the first time in a very long time, she felt like things might be alright between them. They could never go back to what they had been in the past, but they could forge something new in the future.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The Lovely Carnage

  “It’s not really a secret that there aren’t a lot of nephilim in Daelan City at the moment. Or ever, in the grand scheme of things, considering how difficult it is to make one.

  Sure, a demon will burn a city block to the ground, but angels have been known to meticulously wipe out entire families if you offend them and no amount of distance will save you from it.

  And people call them up for what? Prestige? Well, no, and I’m sure you’re wondering, dear listeners, what angels are even useful for in that case.

  Well, if you have someone mortally wounded and in need of healing, you want an angel. Some of them are even rumored to be able to raise the dead, though there’s no evidence that a single instance of this has ever ended well for anyone involved including the dead person.

  But the most common reason? Information.

  Angels know a lot of things. You want to hear the whispers of the darkest corners of the world, you want to call on an angel and not a demon—

  …excuse me I have something to follow up on regarding the Nightingales.”

  “I heard my mother tell you to go and find my father,” Ely said, “but unfortunately, he isn’t here. Lucky for you, I am.”

  Tess gave her a dubious look. Ely glanced up at her, drawing the gun from her coat pocket and popping the cylinder out to press a bullet into each slot.

  “I don’t have time to fight with you about my qualifications,” Ely said. “Suffice it to say I probably knew Callum was alive before you did and he never actually told me. I am keenly invested in getting him back in one piece.”

  “He never told me either. Your mother said to find Joey,” Tess said. There was a hesitance in her voice.

  “That will take hours,” Ely said. “Do you have hours?”

  The desired hesitance was there. Ely struck the low blow true.

  “Does Callum have hours?” she asked.

  “No,” Tess said finally.

  “Then we go,” Ely said. She started to walk and Tess scrambled to follow her. The sky was alight with fights in two separate parts of the city. Ely thought of Dorian.

  She’d left him, safe and sound, in his own apartment. He would be smart enough not to leave. She nodded to herself and continued to walk.

  “Did you notice the trams are down?” Ely asked. “How comfortable are you with a bicycle?”

  “I learned to ride like any other child,” Tess said.

  “Like any other child that can afford it,” Ely said. She pulled her bike out of the shed, and her mother’s, and offered the latter to Tess. She was taller than Ely, the bike would fit.

  “You say that like you couldn’t,” Tess said. She didn’t exactly sound annoyed, but there was an undercurrent of sting in her voice that made Ely like her. She was not one to simply lie down and accept undue criticism from someone who didn’t have room to talk. A rare trait in a woman.

  “Lead the way,” Ely said. Tess took off, rising slightly in her seat to peddle faster. Ely followed a moment later. Tess had a good instinct for the roads of the city, Ely noticed. Whenever it appeared a main thoroughfare was going to be clogged by some kind of fight, be it shoeshiner or hellwatch, she took another route that seemed to get them there just as fast.

  That kind of skill could be useful.

  The Cassander Estate was a smoking wreck. Even from behind her, Ely could hear the distressed ‘no’ from Tess’s lips as the wheels of her bicycle screeched to a halt in front of the garden. She let the bike drop and Ely didn’t say a word.

  The intricately shaped topiaries were bedecked with human limbs and entrails. Someone had strewn intestines around one of the regularly shaped trees in a macabre facsimile of a solstice tree. A severed head floated face down in the fountain, the water stained coppery brown from too much blood. The woman’s hair was done elegantly, Ely could tell, before the head had been removed. Parts of it were matted to her skull with blood, floating tendrils in the water, but the dark hair was forgiving.

  Tess started for the fountain but Ely put a hand on her arm.

  “You don’t want to see this,” Ely said. “Let me take care of her. Go and find my brother, I will meet you in a moment.”

  Tess looked at her with a mixture of horror and gratitude before she started inside. Ely turned to the fountain and leaned over to fish the head out of the water, turning it to face her.

  The look on Helena Cassander’s face was serene. She had never seen the blow coming. That was good. Her peace was almost enviable, or it would have been if she hadn’t been dead.

  Ely cradled the head in her arms and followed Tess into the house. She placed it on the entryway table and folded the cloth over to cover it.

  “Tess?” she asked.

  “This way,” Tess called back. “He was in the dungeon when I last saw him, we both—ancients, no.”

  Ely stepped around the corner. Tess was trembling. Another body, this one a man’s, had been strung up in the kitchen doorway by a length of his own intestine, his arms held wide. For a moment, her own heart skipped, frightened that it was Callum, but after a moment she recognized the mayor’s face.

  There were two deep antemortem lacerations on the right side of his face, as if he had been kissed by something with tusks before his disembowelment. The skin below his chest was singed and cracked.

  Ely put a hand on Tess’s arm.

  “Breathe through your mouth,” she instructed. “He’s gone. It’s over for him, nothing can hurt him now. But my brother is still alive and we have to get him back. There will be time to mourn Henri Cassander. I will personally ensure there is time. But now, we have to move. Nod if you understand me.”

  Tess nodded, shakily, but didn’t step any closer to the kitchen. Ely put her fingers on Tess’s shoulders and turned her away. There was no judgment there. Ely couldn’t imagine what she would have felt like if it had been her father.

  The fresh organs were firmer than what had been in the body of the corpse she’d stolen. Rot had had no time to set in here. Henri’s intestines were more like rat intestines. They weren’t viable. They were perforated, cut into in several places as a clawed creature had haphazardly used them to make an example of the man.

  She lowered him gently and pulled him to the side, laying his body on the table. There was nothing to cover him with. Behind her, she could hear Tess’s breathing begin to quicken.

  “Slowly,” Ely said. “Breathe slowly and only through your mouth. We have to stay calm right now. Now come, and keep your eyes cast to the right.”

  Ely took her arm and started to walk. Tess only resisted for a moment as the pair of them moved for the dungeon. Tess walked on shaking feet and Ely took every force of her own will to keep pace with her and not to rush ahead.

  There were too many steps into the dungeon. Halfway down them, Ely could hear voices.

  “…are you listening? You mustn’t associate with that woman anymore,” a lilting voice said. Ely put out an arm for Tess to stop, and she did. The pair of them crouched, and Ely leaned around the wall.

  The woman with a hand around Callum’s throat was lovely, in her own way. That was the first thing Ely noticed. She noticed that before she noticed the missing arm, and the blood caked all the way down the left side of the woman’s body.

  ‘Concubus,’ her mind thought, somewhere under a layer of haze.

  “I’m doing my best, Lena,” he said. “I couldn’t just let her die, and I thought it might have bee
n one of those situations.”

  Lena chuckled. There was a dash of pain in her smile, a little bit of anger, but if Callum noticed either he made no sign. He didn’t seem to notice Lena’s injury.

  “You have a hero’s heart,” she said, gently. “Like your father. I should like to know more about him.”

  Ely got to her feet and started down the stairs, keeping her center of gravity low. Lena had more or less shrugged off a missing arm. There were not many things in this world that Elysia deemed to be ‘more messed up than she was’, but this was one of them.

  But she was her mother’s daughter. She was fireproof. With the seventy-seven eyes of an angel. She had nothing to fear from a demon.

  It was Tess who spoke.

  “Give him back, Lena,” she said. Her voice sounded dry. Ely ducked behind a singed metal crate and looked at the long silhouettes on the wall behind them. Tess’s shadow crept over the wall as she descended the stairs. Lena was looking at her over her shoulder, her one hand still touching Callum’s chin.

  “You came back,” Lena said. “You really shouldn’t have.”

  Ely moved around the back side of the crate, keeping low and watching their shadows as she did.

  “You have no claim on him,” Tess said. “I don’t know why you didn’t kill him, but you don’t need his soul. Give him back to me.”

  Lena chuckled, then, and her shadow didn’t so much as move. Ely was on the other side of the crates, now. Closer to Lena and Callum than she was to Tess. She could see the rended severed arm lying on the floor with its fingers curled around a severed imp’s head. It took her a moment to recognize Tixi.

  Ely felt that familiar stillness in her chest.

  “I have a claim on my own flesh and blood, girl,” Lena said. “I have as much right to him as anyone. He is my brother, after all.”

  Elysia rose to her feet slowly. Lena’s eyes were firmly fixed on Tess, but Callum seemed to see her. She had to step around a crate, and Lena started to turn to look at her, but Ely caught her in the face with a hard left hook that sent her staggering back.