Midnight #2
Ignatius stares at the floor. “She, erm… she escaped back to the underworld, chasing Interitus, we think.”
“You think? What good is think?” Arcadius paces around the medical suite.
“Chancellor. There are… other things you don’t know.”
“Then enlighten me…” The words are ground out as if he’s chewing on gargoyle stone.
“I thought I had Lucy under my control.”
Arcadius’s voice turns sharp. “Yes, well, there are lots of things you thought you had under your control, and it seems you were sorely mistaken about them all.”
Ignatius stays silent, a weak attempt at keeping information to himself. It’s the wrong move. Even from here, I spot the throbbing veins trickling down from Arcadius’s horns. They pulse in his temple and through the thick cords in his neck. He’s on his last thread.
Ignatius spots Arcadius’s move too late.
Fist.
Nose.
Blood.
Ignatius’s head ricochets off the wall, making a godsawful thunking sound that rattles against my teeth.
His body slides to the floor.
But Arcadius snaps and kicks him square in the face.
“ANSWERS,” he shrieks, losing any sense of decorum or patience.
“Sh-he’s the contract,” Ignatius chokes out, spraying the floor with blood the same way I did.
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“It’s an ancient form of magic, derived from both demonic and celestial sources. Lucy is the embodiment of the contract I made with Architecti and Architecti was never imprisoned… she agreed to be trapped.”
“Agreed?” Arcadius’s voice takes on a shrill tone. “You told me you tricked her into it. What the fuck do you mean she agreed?”
“What use is it telling the world an angel agreed to entrapment? What good would that do for my reputation? For our rule?”
Arcadius’s neck throbs so violently I’m certain his veins will burst. His teeth grind like a horse gnawing hay. His voice drops so low the warning rumbles right across the room to me. “And you didn’t think that was suspicious?”
“I was perhaps distracted by the benefits this would bring me. I thought she was the problem, what did I care for her reasons agreeing to be imprisoned when I knew the situation would boost my career and demonkind?”
Arcadius’s eyes pool with a viciousness that is lethal. He launches forward, thrusting a frustrated boot into Ignatius’s chest. There’s a cracking sound that makes me wince followed by a series of groans.
I move in the bed, the covers shift over each other. Ignatius’s eyes flick to where I’m lying. I freeze, praying he hasn’t realised I’m awake, but the way his expression glowers at me… yeah, I made a mistake.
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. He knows. I can sense it in my bones, in the way my demonic magic fizzes to life, coiling in my gut and brimming at my fingers, static and warm and filled with the urge to protect me.
I stay stock-still, praying he stops looking at me.
It’s Arcadius that breaks the silence. “You and your fucking reputation. I want to know exactly what Lucy is.”
Ignatius finally turns his attention back to Arcadius. He wipes the slowing blood from beneath his nose and stares up at him.
“To imprison an angel, even a willing, fallen one, takes an enormous amount of power. No normal prison could trap her. It needed fail-safes upon fail-safes. I needed pure power.”
Arcadius stumbles back. “The contract you used was born of you both?”
Ignatius nods. “Lucy was both the source and the fail-safe. Her essence was the power that created the prison and the runes were the lock that kept it sealed.”
“Then why is Architecti back? Where the fuck is Lucy?”
“Gone,” Ignatius says and there’s a crack in his voice that makes my throat thick.
He’s a shit of a father, awful to Lucy, and yet, he still loves her? I swallow the hard lump in my throat down, refusing to believe he can be anything but the giant cunt he is.
“The only way to let Architecti out was for Lucy’s soul to be reaped. Her personal lock, so to speak. It’s why I kept her so protected, so close to me, because while she kept her soul, Architecti would stay trapped.”
Arcadius sneers. “And you couldn’t even do that.” He reaches down and picks Ignatius up by his throat as if he were nothing more than a five-year-old boy. It’s astonishing given Ignatius is far taller than the average human and must weigh a shit ton. May I never cross Arcadius on a dark night.
He drops him and leans into Ignatius’s face. “We know what Interitus wants…”
Ignatius dabs at his nose. “The end of fate?”
Arcadius narrows his eyes but Ignatius waves him off. “The Societas members were chanting it during the fight.”
“I see. Well, they’ve spent the last two days gathering forces. They’re now peacefully protesting all over the city. We don’t know what their next move is, but I suspect they’ll make their way back here. We believe Interitus will be looking for a source of pow—oh.”
Ignatius swallows hard.
“When you said the contract was born of you both…” Arcadius starts.
Ignatius nods. “Pure power.”
“Seven devils. No wonder Interitus went after her. We need to send forces to find her. She cannot be allowed to reach Lucy.” Arcadius’s neck flushes a deeper shade of red.
Ignatius holds his hands up in a gesture of peace. “It’s not just Interitus, Architecti disappeared into the underworld too. Be reasonable. We need to make a plan, not just knee-jerk send soldiers to die.”
“REASONABLE? Fucking reasonable? My right-hand devil lied to me for four decades, unleashed a fallen angel that’s making demonkind look like hellspawn, and now you tell me Lucy is not only a ticking bomb if she chose to be, but there’s an angel after her who is planning to quite literally destroy our entire demonic system? ”
Arcadius lurches forward, grabbing Ignatius. This time when he circles his neck he squeezes. “You will never be the archdevil. Not after this. I will see to it that you remain exactly where you are. Beneath me. In second place.”
Arcadius smashes his forehead onto Ignatius’s nose. If it wasn’t broken before, it absolutely is now. I wince.
“If this goes wrong, it will be on your head, not mine. Fix this. Trap both fucking angels, clean up the damned campus.”
“I don’t have enough power to trap them. Not without bringing Lucy back.”
“Then find your fucking daughter. I want her on a leash, preferably one we can utilise. Fail again and it won’t be Lucy’s soul that’s reaped, it will be yours. And when I take it, I will send you so far into the underworld even your darkest prayers won’t save you.”
He head-butts Ignatius again for good measure, a sick crunching of bone and tearing cartilage fills the medical room.
It makes bile lick up my throat. The moan of pain that spills from Ignatius’s mouth is so acute it makes my stomach furl in on itself.
I refuse to feel sorry for that man, but the beating his face just took was savage.
My mind circles back to Arcadius’s words.
Bring Lucy back.
Bring Lucy back.
Bring Lucy back.
When the door clicks shut, Ignatius turns to me and I know, know the way my heart sinks and my toes chill that he is very aware of how long I’ve been awake, and he is pissed.