Midnight
I shift in the bed, edging out of it. I do not want to be left alone with Ignatius.
But my hip hits the frame. I struggle out, my muscles begging me to stop.
Not happening, my survival instinct has kicked in.
Adrenaline courses through my veins, hardening my muscles and making the pain evaporate.
I’ll pay for this later, but right now I need to escape. I won’t let him take my soul willingly.
It’s funny, I used to wonder why the humans I reaped fought. Why they didn’t accept the inevitable. After all these years, I realise I’m no better than them.
Desperate not to die.
I slip on the blood I left.
My feet swing out from under me, and I hurtle across the floor, landing on my chest. All the air empties from my lungs.
I gasp.
Inhale.
Nothing.
Inhale.
Still nothing.
Pins and needles.
Inhale.
I can’t catch any oxygen.
My ribs cramp out.
I’m winded.
The first flutter of panic rises from my gut.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t—
Ignatius hauls me up by the scruff of my collar the way Arcadius did to him. I wince, still struggling to gulp oxygen down.
“Slow. Your. Breathing.”
“I—I.” But my lungs burn, my breaths become a panting mess. Toes and fingers go cold.
I’m going to pass out.
My vision smatters.
A slap lands on my cheek. The hot, stinging shiver of pain enough to pull me out and allow me to focus on him.
“Breathe. Deep. Slow. Long,” he demands and for once in my life, I do as he says.
He holds me upright until my body is calm enough I can see reason and have a coherent conversation.
There’s a ticking in his temple that alerts me to the fact I am on very thin ice here.
“Ignatius, wa—”
“Did I tell you to speak?”
His features soften as he breathes with me. Heavy and slow, we go together. He stinks of coffee and metal; his face is mangled beyond natural repair. The nurse will have to set it and probably use some magic to aid fixing it. I suspect his demon healing will sort the rest.
I press my lips together and stay quiet. Focusing on the details of his mashed face distracts me enough for my breathing to return to normal.
He lifts me off the floor so my toes dangle and brush the cool lino. It takes a feat of enormous strength not to beg, not to plead with him to have mercy and let me go.
What is the point? I owe him a debt, and I have no doubt he is here to collect. I’m on borrowed time given we’re already a couple of days past my reaping. Plus, I have nothing to fall back on, no bargaining chip, no favour. I am a dead woman and he knows that.
“What did you hear?” he growls.
“Nothing,” I bite out way too quickly for it to be true.
His lip curls. Yeah, he isn’t buying my bullshit.
“Midnight, Midnight, Midnight,” he sings my name like the melody of a siren calling me to my death.
I swallow hard and figure the truth is my only way out of this. “I heard it all.”
What I don’t say is that I witnessed Arcadius threaten, humiliate, and promise to dismantle his reputation if he doesn’t fix the mess. I figure this is a situation where less is definitely more.
“He wants you to get Lucy back and imprison the angels… both of them…”
He nods, finally dropping me to the floor and cracks his knuckles. “Arcadius won’t care who is locked up as long as someone pays publicly and he protects our rule over humans.”
I process his words, turning them over and over, probing, poking, looking for the gap.
Ignatius paces up and down the room, the beat of his feet mimicking the churn in my mind as I search for leverage.
There… I’ve got the son of a bitch.
I straighten up, confidence quietly pinning my shoulders back. “You said you need to trap them, surely you wouldn’t lower yourself to such menial work…”
It’s small, a stretch even, massaging his ego so overtly, but it’s a chance and I wholeheartedly launch myself at it. He looks up at me, holding my gaze with a strange intensity.
“There are other ways to trap an angel, but none of them as effective as Lucy would be.”
“Ignatius…” I say, pouring pity into my tone, does he not understand? Is he in denial? “Lucy is gone. I reaped her soul. You’ll never find her in the underworld, she’s probably gone to the other side already.”
Ignatius’s laugh booms out, rattling my teeth and making the spark inside me bloom into embers and flames.
He rounds on me, his already jet-black eyes cooling into voids.
“You have no idea what game you’re playing, reaper. You think a weak little mortal could kill her?” He laughs again, this time it’s pointed, patronising, the type of chuckle designed to humiliate.
“Oh, Midnight, you may have reaped her. But you didn’t kill Lucy…”
“Then what did I do?”
He smiles, but it’s thin and stringy, unlike the violent need coursing through his stare. “You unleashed her.”
I shake my head, not understanding. Adrenaline floods my body as I process his words.
She’s not dead?
I didn’t murder the woman I love?
“Unleashed? Wh—what is she?”
He smiles, though it’s sad, his eyes softening. “She is the source.”
I frown as I lean against the bedside table. “What does that mean? I thought she was the contract?”
“Physically, she was the embodiment of the contract. The manifestation of it, until you broke it. Broke her. You essentially tore the contract up.”
He lets that hang in the air as if it explains everything. As if those vague words mean I’ll suddenly understand, when in reality, I’m more confused than before.
“I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t,” he snarls. “You have no fucking idea what you did. What you unleashed.”
“Then tell me,” I plead, my fists balling at my sides.
“How do you trap an angel, Midnight? A fucking heaven-sent celestial being? And then keep them there… Even if they want out? Do you have any clue what it would take to do that?”
I churn his words over, tossing and turning everything he’s said to me, everything I’ve learnt and heard. “Power. It would take an extraordinary amount of power.”
He nods and the furrow between my brows deepens.
“She’s power?”
“The most pure and raw form. Half angel, half demon. She is neither and both. There is a reason angels and demons don’t mix, don’t procreate. She is more powerful than all of us combined. Before she was constrained inside the contract, and now…” His expression turns grave, his skin paling.
“Now she’s unleashed,” I breathe to myself. This is it, my one chance to convince him. “Let me help…”
It hangs between us. The offer. A promise. Perhaps even a new deal.
“You owe me a debt,” he growls. “Why the hell would I let you help me when by rights you should already be dead and your soul mine?”
“Because…” I trail off, trying to work out which is the best path to go.
Do I barrel in and insult him? Do I fawn over him?
Play to his ego? However I work this, my goal remains the same: get out of my contract and save my soul.
Lucy didn’t care about the impact me reaping her would have.
So why should I care now? If saving her is a means to an end, then so be it.
It worked earlier, so I try again: truth. Brutal, savage and totally honest.
“Because you’re on your own. You have no one to help you fix this, and… and you need Lucy. Right?”
His eyes flash with a glimmering darkness. I’ve got him.
“You’re right… I do want Lucy. Arcadius won’t care as long as the Veil is repaired and the city under control. I can use Lucy to trap Interitus, or Architecti, or perhaps I’ll imprison both of them for screwing my reputation.”
Use Lucy.
The words are so crass. A line of sweat beads on my upper lip, my throat tightens. The growing awareness that Lucy made me reap her to get away from him builds in my gut. Being tied to him again is the worst thing I could do to her.
My gut hardens. She’s already done the worst thing she could to me.
Ignatius rounds on me, boring his pitch-black eyes into me. “Bring her back to me, Midnight.”
I lower my gaze, not quite able to believe I’m going to choose this. But she screwed me. She didn’t even consider what making me kill her would do to me.
Fuck her.
Slowly, I look at him. His smile turns nasty. “You’ll bring me my daughter.”
I’m torn. Furious with her, knowing that to do what she did, she obviously doesn’t give a shit about me. Our entire relationship was a lie. But also recognising that she did this to get away from him.
“If I do that for you, she’ll never forgive me.”
“Then you have a choice to make. Your soul, for hers. Do that, give me my daughter and I’ll let you out of this contract. I want what’s mine and you took it from me.”
“What part of she made me don’t you understand?” I say, way bolshier than I should.
“You think I give one flying fuck what she forced you to do? Agree or…”
He slithers so close, his stubble and metallic breath trickle over my skin. I bite the inside of my cheek to stop myself gagging.
He clutches my throat, the same way Arcadius did to him. Pathetic. The bullied becomes the bully. He’s such a cliché, trying to exert his fucking strength over a smaller person.
His expression goes pitch black; a searing sensation nestles in between my vertebrae. It starts faint then builds and builds until I’m shrieking a hollow wail of pain.
As my vision smatters and fades, the world glows bright. He’s ripping my soul out. Reaping me in the most savage way you can, not quick and gentle, but slow and brutal so I can feel every thread, every fibre tearing from my body.
Blood leaks from my nose, drips from my eyes until my vision is a rainbow of static and grey and murderous red. I no longer know why I’m even hesitating. Lucy screwed me, it’s time to save myself.
“OKAY,” I scream. “Okay…”
His hold on my neck loosens.
“Okay what, Midnight?”
“Okay, I’ll do it. I’ll bring her back.”
He tuts at me.
“Cute. But I need specificity. You’ll bring her back and hand her to me, do you understand?”
“And in exchange you’ll give me my soul?”
He nods. “That was the original deal, a soul for a soul. We’re just changing which soul.”
“Fine, deal,” I say and he lets me go and strides to the door. I slump to the floor. This is a mess. She will never forgive me, but after what she did to me, I’m not sure I care. She deserves this.
“You have five days,” he says and vanishes.
I’m aware there are no entropy moths this time. Is that because I have demon magic?
As the door clicks shut and his footsteps disappear down the corridor, I rest my head in my hands.
There’s no weight on my chest either. It was such a clear sensation that even more than a decade ago I can still remember the cold press of an immeasurable weight and the way my fingers went cold.
I feel nothing. I am numb and I have to wonder if it’s because this time, I sold Lucy’s soul and not mine.