Chapter Thirty - Lucifer #4
I looked around the room. “Where is it?”
Damien’s expression shuttered. “Safe.”
I smiled. There was no humor in it. “Try again.”
He met my eyes and said, “Safer than it would have been in a motel room.”
I slammed him back into the wall again. The stone cracked louder this time. Topher flinched at the sound.
Damien hissed through his teeth but kept talking because self-preservation had never been his strongest spiritual gift. “I’m not saying I was kind,” he said. “I’m saying I got there before somebody worse did.”
“Worse than you?”
“Yes.”
That answer was so immediate it almost amused me.
“You think I’m playing some clever game,” Damien said. “I found him with that Book and a habit forming fast enough to kill a mortal three times over. He wasn’t protecting it. He wasn’t hiding it. He was drowning himself while it sat in the room.”
I stared at him. Damien’s breath came hard and shallow now, his throat reddening where my hand had been.
“I dragged him out,” he continued. “Because if Heaven caught the scent of that fucking Book on him, they’d have destroyed him.”
Vespera folded her arms. “So your solution was here.”
“Yes.”
She looked around the chamber. “You may be surprised to hear I have concerns.”
He ignored her.
“This is one of the only places filthy enough to hide something Heaven wants back,” Damien said, looking at me now. “And ugly enough that no one would expect something like that here.”
I glanced toward Topher again. He had gone slack against the restraint but was still breathing and murmuring under his breath like he was lost. Black blood gleamed wetly at his mouth.
“What exactly,” I said, very softly, “did you do to him?”
Damien’s face hardened. “What I had to.”
“Wrong answer.”
I moved again, but this time Vespera caught my arm before my hand made it back to his throat. Not enough to stop me if I truly wanted through her, but it was enough to make me hear her.
“Look at Topher,” she said quietly.
I did. She was right. This room was not arranged for pleasure.
It was arranged for containment. The straps at his wrists were not decorative.
The bindings around his ribs were set to keep him upright without cutting off his breath.
There was a basin beside the frame, stained black.
Clean cloths. Burned-down candles in a circle of warding ash.
A spoon bent inward from heat. Another syringe snapped in half, as if Topher had crushed it without meaning to.
This was not a performance. This was an intervention carried out by a man with no bedside manner and worse ethics.
Damien followed my gaze. “He kept trying to leave,” he said.
“Good for him.”
“With the Book.”
I turned back to him. “And there it is.”
His face twisted. “What do you think I’m saying?”
“I think you found a broken man and decided to make him useful.”
Damien flinched. “Yeah,” he said after a beat. “But I also kept him alive.”
The honesty was almost worse than a lie.
Topher made another sound. This time I heard it. “I can’t…” His head rolled weakly against the restraint. “Can’t shut it off.”
Vespera was beside him before I could speak, her gloved hand cupping the back of his head just long enough to steady him without startling him further.
“What did you give him?” she asked Damien without looking back.
“Enough to stop the withdrawals and keep him from tearing himself open.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It is what it is.”
I stepped closer to Topher, and the smell hit harder here.
Heroin and sweat and ash. The iron-bitter scent of Fallen blood.
Under it, there was something singed and celestial, like burned feathers and black rain.
His skin was damp and fever-hot. His pupils were blown.
The track marks marched angrily and darkly along the inside of both elbows.
He looked up when I came near, or tried to. His gaze dragged into focus in broken increments.
“Lucifer?” he whispered.
My anger changed. It didn’t vanish, and I put one hand against the side of the frame to stop myself from doing something uselessly violent.
“Yes,” I said.
His eyes glazed over again. “Sorry.”
The word was so small and so unlike him, it nearly split me open. I looked back at Damien. He saw something in my face and squared himself as if ready for another attack anyway.
“You should have come to me,” I said.
His laugh was sharp and ugly. “Why? So you could tell me to wait my turn?”
Vespera’s head turned slightly.
Ah. There was the real wound, finally bleeding.
Damien’s eyes burned. “I found him. I found the Book. I found a way to keep both out of Heaven’s hands for one goddamn night. Forgive me if I didn’t trust your management style.”
I stepped toward him slowly. “Where is the Book?”
He looked at Topher and then back at me. And smiled with exactly enough bitterness to make me want to finish what I’d started.
“Safe,” he said again. “In a place like this.”
I stared at him for one long, dangerous second. Then I said, “You are going to tell me exactly what that means, or this time, I’m going to finally kill you.”