A Rose to the Torch Read online

  To Heather, who patiently reads everything I send her, no matter how grim. I couldn’t have done this without you.

  A ROSE

  TO THE TORCH

  Bartholomew Lander

  Copyright © 2019 by Bartholomew Lander

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  ISBN 978-4-908656-93-4

  First Edition

  Design and Typesetting: Corey Mark

  Lunarium Books

  Von Gerdesgatan 1

  412 59 Gothenburg, Sweden

  www.LunariumBooks.com

  St. Isabeau: Knaves, what sloth! The full moon riseth nigh, and ye have nary a sword nor scabbard between ye!

  Father Moreau: Pray, forgive me mine indolence. Wherefore dost thou grace us with thy radiance?

  St. Isabeau: I am come to effect a trap for a louse.

  Father Moreau: A louse, milady?

  St. Isabeau: Aye, for hemomancers are naught but lice. And to find one, we must needs spill blood.

  —Sacrament of the Lady Saint, Act II, Scene IV

  Chapter 1

  Nothing had been the same for Coral since Tamara moved away for college. She didn’t need to take it personally, but she did. The girl’s parents had wanted her to get an education out of state. They may as well have come out and said it: Tamara would be wasted on Wheatling, North Carolina. She was too good for them all, held too much potential to live cradle to grave in that crusted sore of a town.

  Don’t worry, Tamara had reassured her on the day of their parting. It’s only for two years. Only. Coral had put on her strongest front and given her a tight hug, as if she could permanently squeeze a part of her best friend into her. For Coral, it wasn’t just a separation; it felt disturbingly close to an apocalypse. Though she could never say as much aloud, she needed Tamara. Without her, she just didn’t feel human.

  The worst part was that everybody around Coral noticed the change. At first, she’d slapped on her old cardboard smile to conceal the thoroughness of her loss, but six months of that had left her fatigued. She gave up trying to trick people. People responded by giving her a wide berth, and that was fine by Coral.

  For the last six months, sleep was sporadic, meals were bland and unfulfilling, and the start of her own first semester of college was looking decidedly precarious. She had spent the months since graduation all but sealed up in her apartment rented on her parents’ dime. The internet was an opioid, she laughed joylessly to herself more than once. With her only meaningful social connection severed, she found herself hollowly imitating the things she’d have done with Tamara: listening to punk rock on the stereo, losing herself in poorly written Kirakera fanfiction, playing Garnet Cross Exalt, or sitting through movies she didn’t care about, all the while waiting restlessly for the next time she could call or text Tamara without making a grand nuisance of herself.

  That was the pattern she found herself in, and she was perfectly fine with cocooning herself in it. She would have passed the 2009 Christmas holidays in that single-room apartment if not for the text message from her mother on the evening of Sunday, December ninth: Happy birthday Coral! Don’t forget to pick up your medicine from the pharmacy. The insurance will tell me if you don’t.

  Pain in the ass woman, Coral hissed to herself when she saw the message. Mama was somehow even more overbearing now than when they shared a roof. It wasn’t like she really needed the Factor, anyway. But maintaining the masquerade was a key part of her life, whether Tamara was there or not. Despite the reluctance weighted about her neck, she slipped out of her apartment into the cold Wheatling evening and made her way downtown to Garnet Avenue, the thin line between the greed and the rot.

  Sunday evening had brought out the usual crowds. Tonight the sixteen-to-twenty-two demographic was out in full force. Coral threaded her way through gaps in the human walls that pressed in opposite directions along the too-narrow sidewalks with a practiced step. She made a point of keeping her eyes down on the cracked concrete. It was easier to avoid bumping into people if she didn’t blind herself on the aggressively dazzling lights of downtown. But there was a darker reason she dropped her gaze.

  She could almost feel the eyes of the crowds dissecting her, looking for a gap in her facade large enough to slip their hooks into. It was a familiar paranoia, a nostalgic panic that characterized her life before Tamara. When they were together, Coral’s terror of the throngs of passersby was so numbed that she, at times, forgot why she should be afraid. The day she left, it was like someone kicked Coral’s feet out from under her. All at once, her security and comfort were uprooted, exposing the grasping tendrils of something buried and hideous.

  Now, for the first time since she was twelve, Coral was again terrified of her own shadow, of the revealing leers of the multitudes, of the gainless blustering of the Anti-Masonics. With her anchor to humanity off to school in Oregon, she was once more adrift on an ocean of hopeless fear. That ocean welcomed her back with a grin that grew more threatening with each passing day.

  That’s because Coral was different from Tamara—different from everyone. She was a hemomancer, one of the cursed, blood-controlling devils who darkened the pages of history. She hadn’t chosen that, of course; nobody in their right mind would choose to be a verm. Between emotional vendettas for historical crimes and strictly practical matters like fueling scientific progress, humans had more than enough reason to murder a hemomancer on sight. Without her best friend to assuage her fear, Coral had retreated to that familiar, all-devouring dread.

  Fighting back a shiver, Coral lifted her face to risk a glance at Garnet Avenue. The dingy glow of the old streetlights was outshone by the bright marquees and strobing signage that covered the buildings like wrapping paper. Some of the storefronts bore LED displays or played host to small fleets of advertising drones; they were modernities that seemed pretentiously out of place when contrasted with the humble, single-story construction of the entire district. It was like a varnish layer atop rotting drywall, and the smell matched.

  A flurry of cold wind whipped up, stinging Coral’s eyes and cheeks. Blinking back against the biting chill, she tucked deeper into her scarf. Only a few more streets separated her and the pharmacy on the corner of Garnet and Eighth. Of course, the mixed crowds of upper- and lower-class shoppers and diners all conspired to make her trip take as long as possible. She’d have taken to shoving the insultingly slow man ahead of her if she weren’t so afraid of standing out.

  Ahead, just above a buzzing and whirring shop filled to the brim with the latest high-tech gadgets, loomed a billboard depicting two silver serpents coiled about a winged staff. Caduceus Industries, the harshly imperial font read, forging the future of genetics. Caduceus Industries, hemotech leader. Caduceus Industries, the injection that stirred their moribund town into its lethargic death throes.

  A long line, mostly of teenagers, wrapped along the outer wall of the cinema. Punk-rock hairdos and trench coats, the hallmarks of the crimson counterculture. The cause was clear: the old-style marquee proudly announced the release of Blood Watchers 4, the latest in the culturally bankrupt film series that amounted to little more than masturbatory hemomancer worship. So that’s why there’s so many students out. As she walked past them, she couldn’t help but wonder how those die-hard fans would react if they knew what she was.

  After weaving between a drunk and a trio of businessmen in identical suits, Coral reached her destination. The pharmacy was narrow but deep, crushed between a cantina and a used electronics store. The whole building emitted a sterilizing white light through its
full-wall windows, silhouetting advertisements for dietary supplements.

  Sucking in a deep breath, Coral pressed herself up against the front door. The glass barrier parted with a low chime, and a wall of warm air greeted her as she shuffled inside. Aisles and shelves stacked high with colored boxes and irregularly shaped packaging surrounded her. There were four other customers inside. They were all, without exception, browsing the wares in the hemotech aisle.

  The smell of rubbing alcohol and plastic invaded Coral’s scarf and burned her nostrils. It was a welcome change from the thick humanity outside. The sensation of the interior’s heat slowly seeping through her jacket was a comforting change, so she held fast to it, steadying herself on it. She reminded herself to act natural, normal. I’m alive. It’s not a crime to be alive. With a light sigh, she loosened her scarf and adjusted her shoulder-length hair to free her neck as she made her way to the counter.

  The woman working the counter was the usual weekend lady. She was short, wide, and heavyset, but wore it damn well considering. Her face was round and chubby but undeniably cute. Coral was only a few paces from her when she looked up from the pills she was counting and greeted her with a broad smile. “Coral!” she said brightly. “Good to see you! What can I do for you today?”

  “Hey, Trix.” She took another breath to acclimate to the internal temperature. Precipitation had started to fog on her forehead. “Got any Factor Eight in?”

  “We sure do.” The woman fetched a pair of small boxes from beneath the counter like they were prepared just for her. Kaiketsu LTD’s blood-drop insignia adorned the otherwise plain packaging. “Got it in this morning, actually. Need syringes, too?”

  Coral pulled her insurance card out of her wallet and set it on the counter. “Nah, I’ve got my own, thanks.”

  The woman smiled warmly at her. “Prepared as always. Anythin’ else I can get for ya?”

  “A twelve-pack of muters.”

  “You got it. We’ve got a thirty-percent discount on them today and today only. Want to upgrade to a twenty-four?”

  “No thanks.” She didn’t need the muters, just like she didn’t need the Factor. It was little more than an act.

  The woman added a small case of yellow-capped syringes to the order and rang it up alongside the Factor Eight. She read off the insurance card and clacked a few keys into the computer. “Alrighty, with the muter discount, your total comes to eighty-six fifty. May I stamp your card?”

  “Go for it.” Coral slid her point card across the counter atop a small stack of bills. In return, the woman punched another pair of holes in the grid, bringing her three spaces from a free bottle of her favorite painkiller.

  The woman was about to hand the point card back, but her eyes must have caught something interesting on it. She brought it beneath her glasses to check it at close range. Her whole face cracked up in a brilliant smile. “Oh my God! Happy birthday, Coral!”

  Coral had hoped she wouldn’t notice. “Yeah, thanks.”

  With a proud grin, she finally handed the point card back. “Have you done anything crazy to celebrate adulthood?”

  “The plan is to spend all night studying,” she lied. “How does that rank on the crazy scale?”

  The woman laughed. “If that’s your idea of christening the rest of your life, then you’re out of your mind, sugar. But, to each her own.” She bagged the Factor Eight and muters and handed them over with a small handful of change. “Here you go. Have a good one.”

  “Thanks. You too.” Coral took her purchase and slipped it into her shoulder bag. She waved a soft goodbye to the woman and turned to leave.

  But as she made for the exit onto Garnet Avenue, she felt something strange. Intuition pulled her attention to the other side of the pharmacy. A small, disparate crowd was browsing the hemotech paraphernalia. A middle-aged woman in pigtails and horn-rimmed spectacles. A homeless-looking man with trembling fingers caressing a display of synthblood. A man with Irish-red hair in a dark green jacket. A pair of businessmen. Nothing seemed unusual, but she could have sworn she’d felt somebody watching her. Not unlikely, she reminded herself. Not every day you see a girl buying clotting factor.

  So she exited and started back toward home along the industrial production boundary, skirting past boisterous hucksters and the rare but formidable aristocrat. Her breath danced in airy wisps through the air as she put her focus on avoiding more of the Sunday masses. Two tweed-coated men carried bulging bags from the fashion boutiques. A drunken but well-dressed socialite damsel was strung between two sequentially older copies of herself. A young Indian was shredding like a demon on an acoustic guitar. It was all typical Garnet Avenue, typical Sunday, typical exhaustion. She would only have to put up with it for another half block; her favored shortcut home was coming up.

  The alley appeared on her right, sandwiched between a candy shop and a Thai restaurant. It was an ill-frequented passage, a run-down stitch in the city’s side. Somehow they’d missed it when they’d upgraded Garnet Avenue from a slum to the jewel of Wheatling. Sure, it was filthy, but it was also quiet and lonely, which made it perfect for someone like her.

  But as she entered the darkened mouth of the alley and the sound of Sunday mingling dulled, she heard the distinct call of footsteps scraping along at the forsaken brickwork behind her. A sliver of fear crept into Coral’s stomach. Her breath hitched. Somebody was following her. Her thoughts snapped back to the feeling of eyes on her at the pharmacy. Dammit, she hissed to herself in a raw panic. Last time I spurn my intuition!

  Adrenaline began to pound through her. She walked faster. One hand forced its way deep into her pocket, and her fingers curled about her pocketknife. She knew how to use it, and she would if she had to. Still, she rounded the next corner of the backstreet with unearthly haste and prepared to break into a sprint.

  “Coral! Coral, wait!”

  The man’s voice struck her right in the throat. Someone she knew? The breath escaped in a stutter. Uncertainty and confusion weighed her feet. She came to a dead stop in the middle of the alley. Her heart was beating in triplets, but some pernicious curiosity made her linger, made her turn around to see who had called her name.

  When he came around the corner, he was just a silhouette, a head and a half taller than her, that inked out the end of the dimly lit alley. A moment of acknowledgment fluttered between them. His footfalls, which had been driven by purpose until she’d turned, came to a stop fifteen feet from her.

  Light and laughter from the flow of shoppers only a short distance away spilled behind the figure, allowing details to slowly paint themselves through the gloom. He was a tall man, around thirty, with a sturdy build. Thick, shaggy red hair fell down around his ears. He had wide shoulders and a full beard that framed his curled lips. He looked like an O’Brien or a McDonnell. The sheen of a leather jacket played at her eyes. Dark green.

  Panic hit her. It was the same man she’d seen at the pharmacy. This person didn’t know her name; he’d merely overheard it from the cashier. And she’d fallen for his trap. Despite the fear of assailants and muggings and far worse that society had crushed into her, she found herself paralyzed, unable even to scream.

  But she had to do something, even if her legs wouldn’t obey her. A lungful of air crawled out her throat and escaped into the musty air of the alley. “What do you want?” she demanded, her voice wavering and cracking.

  “Relax. I only want to talk,” the man said, his voice betraying an accent from somewhere across the pond.

  He only wanted to talk. How often did that line crop up in movies? It had to be a lie, and it was so brazen that it fueled Coral’s disbelief into a blaze. “If you wanna talk,” she hissed, “then how ’bout saying somethin’ instead of stalkin’ me through the streets for the better part of a mile?” The courage flowed from nowhere. Once she heard her own words, however, it began to leak. The reality of the situation set in with a horrid clarity.

  “Sorry,” the man said, drawing a cautious step
nearer to her. “I did not want to attract any unneeded attention to us.”

  Coral broke through her paralysis. She sidled a step backward. The path behind her led to a further tangle of unreputable alleys that perforated downtown like the tunnels of a rabbit warren. Should she run that way and try to lose him? Or should she bolt past him and back around the corner, into the throngs of Garnet Avenue only thirty feet away?

  Before she could reach a decision, a low, horrible vibration crawled through her chest and skull. It pushed and pulled at her insides, and she at once became lightheaded. The spark of fear ignited and bloomed even brighter in her bosom. Her hair stood on end. That sensation could only have meant one thing. She desperately regretted her decision to enter the alley. This was no standard-issue pervert; the man had the same power that she did. Like her, he was a hemomancer.

  The man’s lips curled further in a weak smile. “Just as I thought. You’re the girl I’ve been seeking.”

  Coral took a shaky breath and slipped one step further toward the labyrinthine network of backstreets behind her. The glistening, mirror-like windows of the Gyrocore building towered overhead, blotting out even the moonlight. Her shaking fingers curled tighter about the knife in her pocket—not that it would do her any good against a verm.

  “Coral Savary,” the man announced. “Eighteen as of today. Sagittarius. Hemophiliac. Hemomancer.”

  The last word echoed in Coral’s ears. Her body went ice cold. Her nightmares revolved around that single word spoken aloud, splitting her facade and exposing her core for the vultures of society. The crowd just beyond the alley was suddenly far too near, far too interested in that word of judgment. Her throat constricted about labored, hazardous gasps. How did he know? Nobody should have known.

  Every moment of every day was lived in fear of this. Her mind flashed to disjointed scenes of her life. Her mother, pious and ignorantly brutal, reassuring her that no hemomancer could enter heaven. Wounds and blood peeled out of her, unstaunched. Middle school. Tamara. The hospital stay that brought them together. One by one, her lies and inconvenient, painted-over truths began to collapse her from within. “You don’t know anything about me,” she spat, searching in a panic for some argument to jam between them like a bit of upturned furniture.