Chapter 42
Chapter Forty-Two
O n Sophia’s return from hell, Bianca got the news that Eddie had managed to patch first the wrath seal, and then the lust and pride seals. They weren’t fixed, but they would hold.
Sophia beamed at her, happy to celebrate a small victory. “We’ve bought ourselves some time.”
“That’s great,” Bianca said and meant it. A small gap in the unrelenting pressure was welcome, but she’d run out of joy. Carmen was having a tough time with Christen’s death and needed all Bianca’s love and support. Her sister’s grief should’ve pushed Lucifer out of her mind, been enough distraction for her to grasp the inescapable reality that he was no longer part of her life, and that was a good thing. Bianca should’ve been concentrating on Carmen.
Instead, she’d come to the depressing conclusion that she missed Lucifer more than ever, which meant that she was an even bigger idiot than she thought she was. With Carmen inconsolable over her loss, Bianca buried her feelings deep and got on with life. She would get over Lucifer, because she had to.
Keeping busy occupied her mind and kept her obsessing to manageable levels. Fortunately, there was plenty to do. As humans, the witches didn’t have any great powers, and their magic was on lockdown just in case, but they could find information and free angels to do their angelic stuff. Angels could be annoyingly secretive about what that consisted of, and she didn’t have the energy to pursue the details.
Instead, Bianca had been trying to find out more about the mysterious three that being, Indolex, had mentioned.
Sophia took a seat beside her at the large wooden table in Sophia’s library. “How’s it going?”
With its vaulted ceilings and four floors of books rising on each side of a central atrium, it was a place to warm a book nerd’s heart. So much knowledge retained in that vast space blew her mind. The age of some of the books was similarly dizzying.
“Not too bad.” Bianca carefully closed the book in front of her and pushed it away. This one was a mere four hundred years old and not even worthy of the librarian’s special handling.
Sophia read the titles of the books spread on the table in front of her. “Any idea who or what the three may be yet?”
The angel in charge of the library coughed and handed Sophia a pair of gloves.
“Sorry, Celeste.” Smiling at her, Sophia put on the gloves. As the archangel of wisdom and knowledge, Sophia had the largest library on any of the three planes.
“Any reference we find to the three normally refers to heaven, earth, and hell,” Bianca said with a nod to Celeste.
Celeste had been a major help in narrowing the search to what Bianca needed in the massive repository. Bianca would have wandered around for years without her assistance.
Sophia looked thoughtful. “Given the context, I would say that’s a reasonable assumption.”
“We thought so.” Celeste folded her lips primly. “Other biblical references refer to the father, son, and holy ghost, but we couldn’t connect the witchling Emma to any of those.”
“So, based on the assumption that the three does refer to heaven, hell, and earth, we think we can confidently say that whatever the reason is that they want Emma, she represents the earth of that trilogy.” Bianca showed Sophia a huge tome with leather binding and an elaborately embossed title. “I’m searching for a connection between witchcraft and demons.”
Celeste folded her hands in front of her. “Much has been written about the connection between witches and demons,” she said. “Many accounts of witches summoning demons or being in league with them. Most of these can be dismissed as superstition, but there are a couple that bear closer examination.”
Sophia’s blue eyes sharpened. “How would you know the difference?”
“Right.” Bianca and Celeste had been working on this for days. She’d read more stories and journal entries about cloven-hooved babies than was good for anyone. “We know demons don’t reproduce with humans.” Only hell princes could do that apparently. Who knew? Well, now she did. “We also know that only hell princes can be summoned, so that narrowed it down to only references to one of the seven hell princes.”
“The difficulty has come in the names.” Celeste sighed. “Humans use hell princes’ names interchangeably and incorrectly, and it is not unusual to find several hell princes named in one summoning.”
“I also know a couple of the summonings that were real.” Bianca kept her face and voice expressionless. “Lucifer mentioned some names. So, we started looking for summonings and interactions with demons that bore a resemblance to those.”
Sophia looked impressed. “You have been busy.”
Well, it was that or mope around and wish she had better taste in males.
“Here we came across several consistencies.” Celeste tenderly located a book which had been hand scribed with beautiful gold embellishments and painted illustrations. “Most notable of which was that the more powerful the witch, the more effective the summoning.” She cleared her throat as Sophia reached for the book, and then pushed it toward her.
Sophia snatched her hands back and winked at Bianca. “Sorry, Celeste.”
“In addition,” Celeste said. “The more powerful the witch, the more extensive the consequences of the summoning.”
Sophia frowned. “Explain.”
“A lesser witch performing a summoning would have a smaller effect.” Bianca indicated a pile of abandoned books at the far end of the table. “It would vary from a piece of furniture moved, or something breaking in the house. Small things.” She pointed to a smaller pile near them. “The stronger witches did actually have an interaction with the demon, or as we know hell prince, they’d summoned.”
Celeste clicked her tongue. “Unfortunately, not many of them survived.”
And Bianca knew who was to blame for that. He’d bragged about it to her. Not the right male for any woman, especially a witch. “And their deaths were often consequences of their demand from the hell prince. Like, for instance, if one asked for eternal beauty, she could end up murdered by a jealous lover.”
“Right.” Sophia nodded. “So how does this relate to Emma?”
“Emma is the most powerful witch I’ve ever seen,” Bianca said. “And she’s only eight. She hasn’t even come into her powers properly yet. We know that archangels and hell princes can boost a witch’s power because they’ve done it with me.”
“Most irregular.” Celeste shook her head.
“So, we know witch power and hell prince and archangel power is compatible. And according to anyone who’s gone head-to-head with these rebel demons, they have powers they shouldn’t.” Bianca didn’t want to dwell too much on how powerful those demons were. Indolex had terrified her.
Celeste sniffed. “Ending other demons for instance, should be a power only hell princes can control.”
“But these demons can,” Bianca said. “So, it’s not a far reach to think that a being as powerful as Indolex would be compatible with a witch’s power.” The idea of Emma in Indolex’s grasp made her blood run cold. “In short, Indolex can use Emma’s power and he wants Emma because she is so powerful.”
“To what end?” Sophia tapped her index finger on the desk.
“That.” Bianca allowed her building frustration to escape in a sigh. “Is what we’ve been concentrating on while you were away.”
Celeste clicked her tongue. “To make any progress, we had to make another assumption. If Emma was the earth representative of the three, then the other two would need to be of hell and heaven. And they had to be as, if not more, powerful than Emma.”
Sophia’s eyes widened. “How powerful?”
“The most powerful. They certainly searched long and hard to find the most powerful witch,” Bianca said and waited for Sophia to put the pieces together.
“Heaven and hell.” Sophia took a deep breath. “You mean a hell prince and an archangel.” She looked aghast and shook her head. “They couldn’t actually believe that they could capture either or both of those.”
Celeste broke the bad news. “Belphegor is missing.”
“But she often goes off on her own.” Sophia shook her head more vehemently. “Honestly, I don’t think we can say that Indolex has her.”
“But we also cannot assume that he hasn’t got her,” Celeste said. “We have consistently underestimated our foe to our disadvantage.”
“With that much power, he’s planning something big.” Bianca put another book in front of Sophia. “Something big enough to need that much power. But also, we’ve been working on the basis that the end of days will end all of us, Indolex included. But what if it didn’t?” She looked to Celeste for support and got a tight nod. “Why would Indolex go to this much trouble only to bring about his death? And then we had to ask ourselves if Indolex has found a way to survive the end of days.”
“That’s impossible.” Sophia read the spine of the book Bianca had given her. “A Codex of Ancient Beings.”
“I’m sure those gods would have said the same,” Bianca said. “In their time, they would have believed nothing could come after them.”
“But it did.” Celeste looked grim. “They were vanquished and replaced by hell princes and archangels.”
Sophia paled. “Vanquished but not destroyed.”
Bianca had been shocked to discover there had been beings before archangels and hell princes. Celeste had filled her in. The battle for souls had been taking place for eon upon eon, further back than even the hell princes and archangels knew.
“Fuck!” Sophia sat bolt upright. “They’re trying to destroy the current order.”
Celeste took a careful breath. “And they need the horsemen to do that.”
“And replace it with what?” Sophia frowned.
“Nature abhors a vacuum,” Celeste murmured.
“We think.” Bianca indicated herself and Celeste. “That it’s a question of replace it with who.” She tapped the Codex. “And that’s what we need to find out.”
* * *
The impact of repairing Lucifer’s seal had been the hardest on Eddie. Perhaps because it was her third repair, or perhaps because she didn’t share a deeper connection with him like she did with Wrath and Shade, but the repair of the pride seal had drained Eddie to the point where she’d slept for twelve hours.
Ramiel and Wrath had helped heal her, and Shade had left with her not ten minutes earlier. Ramiel had assured them she was fine, but Wrath and Shade had refused to even consider attempting another repair without the hell princes there to assist.
“Which puts the pressure on all of us to get our parts done,” Raphael said lounging on an ice-blue linen chaise and quaffing another glass of the excellent port Lucifer kept for him. “We need to stop the rest of this fuckery before the seals grow so disastrously weak again.”
When Ramiel and Vexia had left, it had been all Lucifer could do not to ask them to swing by Sophia’s realm and check on Bianca for him. “Or find that angelic Nephilim.”
“Or that.” Raphael sighed. “Michael and Ava are on that.”
That distracted him from his thoughts. “They’re working together?”
“Uh, no.” Raphael chuckled. “Michael is trying to hide what he’s up to, and Ava is determined to find him and take over from him.”
Fuck! They all needed to stop the infighting and the bullshit. Surely, if anything was wrong with Bianca, someone would have told him. Or maybe not. Maybe they all thought he didn’t deserve to know after his last interaction with Bianca. She was his though, of course he deserved to know. The best would be if he went to Sophia’s realm and saw for himself.
“Are you listening to me?” Raphael raised his eyebrow.
Lucifer studied his immaculate gardens, but even they didn’t give him a sense of peace. “Yes.”
She would refuse to see him. What was she doing with her time? His haglette didn’t like being idle. She must be happy to have Leona back. He’d bet his left ball, and his right, that nobody had bothered to tell her he’d given up Ashe to get Leona for her. The most inexplicable part of the Ashe business was that it didn’t feel like a sacrifice, so he had no reason to expect praise for it.
With the defection of so many of his horde, only a handful of demons were in the gardens raking, trimming, and weeding his painstakingly created paradise. He didn’t think Bianca had seen the gardens when she’d been there. She hadn’t even had Eggs Benedict.
Like most witches, Bianca loved nature, but she would love it in its wildest and purest form, and not his manicured and maintained gardens. She would hate the controlled rigidity.
“Lucifer.” Raphael joined him at the window. “You’re deep in thought.”
“Do you remember, Rafe, why I designed the garden like this?” Not a stray leaf or petal, not one grass blade longer than its fellow.
Raphael gave him a quizzical look. “You crave order. You always have done.”
“Do you like my gardens?” Raphael had never said.
Sipping his port, Raphael studied the gardens. “I never gave it much thought. They’re like the rest of your demesne, very…neat.”
“Hmm.” He’d always loved the exacting tidiness of his demesne, insisted on it from his horde.
“Lucifer?” Raphael stared at him. “Why are we talking about your gardens?”
He’d rather stab his tongue than admit to anyone how often his thoughts veered to his haglette, so he said, “I was wondering how others saw it.”
“Right.” Raphael gave him a searching stare. “Others in general, or others in particular?”
When in doubt, deny. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Of course you don’t,” Raphael drawled.
“Indeed.” His thoughts were making him maudlin, drifting too close to that empty darkness within him. “Let’s discuss what we need to do next.”
“I still think we should concentrate on finding Ashe.” Raphael leaned a shoulder on the white pillar beside the window. “Levi and Zeb are doing reconnaissance. Wrath has the armies getting ready. Michael and Ava are on that angelic Nephilim. Gabriel is looking for Belle.”
“Ashe is no longer a major player.” And Lucifer couldn’t be bothered to pursue his vengeance anymore.
Raphael nodded. “But I have a feeling Ashe is the key to finding Indolex, and that’s a fucker I definitely want to have a conversation with.”
“Good.” He tried to work up some enthusiasm. “Let’s find Ashe and Indolex.”
“We found him before.” Raphael frowned. “Are you worried we won’t find him again?”
“No.”
“And you’re not upset you gave him up?” Raphael finished the port in his glass.
Raphael was digging for something, and Lucifer wished he’d come out and say it without this song and dance routine. “Where are you going with this?”
“All you’ve wanted since Ashe defected is to find him and punish him. And now.” Raphael clicked his fingers. “You give him up, and you’re not even upset.”
“I did it to save the witch.” He hadn’t even hesitated. Hadn’t even needed to think about it.
“Yes, you did.” Raphael nodded. “Because you promised Emma you would find her mother.”
“Exactly.” The knowing, smug look on Raphael’s face was asking to be punched.
“Here’s the thing about that.” Raphael smirked. “You promised that witchling you would find her mother. You knew better than to promise you would bring her back alive.”
Lucifer couldn’t believe this was coming from soft-hearted Raphael. “You think I should have let Leona die?”
“We’ve all had to make tough decisions for the good of creation as a whole,” Raphael said. “Nobody likes doing it, but sometimes it has to be done. Yet you chose to save one witch instead of capturing a key player in the demon rebellion.”
Raphael had been waiting like a bloated toad to have this conversation with him. Only the urgency of the seal repair had kept him at bay this long. “Your point being?”
“You didn’t save Leona for Emma.” Raphael pinned him with a hard gaze. “If you’d chosen Ashe over Leona, as much as I would have hated it, I would have understood.”
“Only a prick would have let that woman die.”
Raphael laughed. “Which you tell anyone who will listen that you are.”
Hell’s armpit, if it went on much longer, they may as well braid each other’s hair and get matching mani pedis. “Not that much of a prick.”
“You used to be.” Raphael strolled over to the decanters and filled his glass. “I can name you hundreds of arguments you and I have had in similar situations. You always choose the rational path. I’m always the one arguing for sentiment.” He draped himself over the chaise. “In all the ages we have been partners, I have never seen you let sentiment influence your decisions.” He toasted Lucifer with a smug grin. “At least you never did before.”
“Before what?” Lucifer braced for the answer he already knew.
“Before you met Bianca.”