Chapter Thirty-Six - Lucifer
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Lucifer
AFTER I LEFT Evie, I went to the Reliquary and spent an ungodly amount of time interrogating Damien until he told me every detail he knew twice, then a third time when I disliked his tone. Vespera watched most of it from a chair, delighted enough to be irritating and too useful to throw out.
Liora was up in the penthouse and then the hotel like a quiet spell, reinforcing wards in places I had never considered vulnerable, mirrors, drains, window reflections, the black shine of the piano in the sitting room.
I’d sent Azazael to find the ancient gods. Morathis arrived near evening without using any door I recognized, which nearly earned her a violent welcome until she lifted both hands and said, “If I meant harm, Lucifer, you would have felt it before you saw me.”
I disliked how often she was right.
Thyronis arrived after her, carrying the silence of ancient thresholds with him. He looked once toward Topher’s room and said, “The path is not ready.”
“Thank you,” I said. “And here I thought we were all gathered for the ambiance.”
He gave me a calm look. “You are most welcome.”
He was infuriating.
Through all of it, Evie remained in our room. Mostly.
She slept in pieces. Ate half a piece of toast under protest. Took the oral medication with a dramatic grimace and accused it of tasting like “strawberry-flavored sidewalk dust.”
She asked about Topher every time I walked in. She also continued asking about the Book, so I finally told her what I could. It was never enough, but she knew that. So did I.
At dawn the next morning, Topher sat up on his own. By midday, he walked to the bathroom with the nurse hovering like a worried mother hen. By early evening, he was walking the hallways alone.
And by that night, he had somehow snuck out and gone to his suite for fresh clothes. When he returned, his face was hollowed out in ways Evie’s magic hadn’t touched.
I met him in the foyer, and he said immediately, “I can do it.”
“You look like a strong breeze could fight you and win.”
“I said I can do it. I didn’t say I’d enjoy it.”
There was that edge. A ghost of the old Topher.
I nodded once, and we left immediately for the Reliquary.
As we walked the long hallway, Az took the rear. Vespera at my right, and Liora, behind us. Thyronis and Morathis waited near the far wall, ancient things wearing patient faces.
Evie stayed in our room, and that had been the worst argument of the last twenty-four hours. I had won. Technically. She had called it “temporary victory by medical tyranny,” which I accepted.
The Reliquary doors opened, and the room inside was dark and still, shelves of relics sleeping behind glass, old weapons gleaming under low light, warded cases humming faintly with all the terrible things I had collected over the centuries because apparently I had always mistaken danger for decor.
Damien was chained to a chair in the corner. Vespera pulled out his gag only because I wanted him to be able to answer questions and suffer the consequences of speaking.
Topher stepped inside and stopped. Every ward in the room recognized him and then recoiled. The air snapped tight.
Vespera’s eyes narrowed. “Well, that’s not ominous.”
I flicked my gaze towards her, and her mouth flattened into a line.
Topher walked to the center of the room, each step careful, but not weak. He was measured, as if he could feel the floor deciding whether it would remain a floor beneath him.
He lifted one hand, but nothing happened for a breath. Then, another. His fingers trembled as he closed his eyes.
“Don’t reach,” Liora said softly.
His eyes flew open. But she stood very still near the threshold, head tilted like she was listening to a song under the walls.
“If you reach for it, it pulls. Shorten the distance instead.”
Topher’s jaw tightened. “I know how to use my own pathways.”
“Yes,” she said. “And right now they know how to use you back.”
He inhaled slowly. Then, he changed the shape of the room. It wasn’t visible because the Reliquary remained the Reliquary. Shelves. Glass. Weapons. Shadows. But the spaces between things began to thin.
The distance from Topher’s hand to the far wall shortened by an inch.
Then a foot. And soon, a shadow unfolded near the floor.
It didn’t spread, but lengthened, like a cut in black silk.
Below it was not another room. It was a hallway, but only because my mind needed to call it something.
A narrow stretch of absence, lit by no visible source, its walls too smooth, too still, as if the space had been abandoned by direction itself.
The smell hit next. Old paper. Dust. Scorched vellum. Something sweet burned to musk.
Topher swayed, and Az moved, but I lifted a hand. Not yet.
Topher’s fingers curled, and the dead hallway twitched. Something inside it shifted, too large for the narrow space, too aware for an object.
The Book appeared at the edge of the opening. A package wrapped in black cloth. And the cloth smoked. Gold light bled through the fibers in thin, impatient lines. Every relic in the room seemed to stand at attention as if they knew this Book should not be here.
Topher opened his eyes, and they were pale and empty and furious.
“I told you,” he said, voice shaking. “It wanted to be found.”
The Book slid out of the dead pathway and dropped onto the Reliquary floor. With a heavy thud. It was ancient and awake, and probably calling its Maker.
The pathway snapped shut, and Topher collapsed. For a second, no one moved. Then Az was there, crossing the Reliquary in three strides and dropping beside him, one hand going to Topher’s throat, the other braced against his shoulder.
“He’s alive,” Az said.
I hated how much relief that sentence dragged out of me.
Topher’s face had gone white, and black blood trickled from his nose. Sweat gathered at his temples, and his body folded at an angle that looked wrong. His hand still twitched against the floor, fingers curling and uncurling as if some part of him was still trying to hold the path closed.
The Book lay on the floor, the gold light bleeding through the cloth in strange lines.
“Take him back to the guest room,” I said.
Az looked up at me. “You should come.”
“I will. Soon.”
His gaze moved to the Book, then back to me. “Lucifer.”
“I need to know what it does.”
“You heard what he said.”
“I heard him say not to open it.” My jaw tightened. “Unfortunately, it has already opened too many things around us.”
Az didn’t like that answer, but frankly, neither did I.
Liora stepped forward from the doorway. She had been quiet for so long, I had almost forgotten she was there. Her face was pale, eyes fixed on Topher.
“I’ll help him settle,” she said.
Az hesitated. Then he gathered Topher carefully, lifting him as if he weighed nothing, though the way his jaw flexed told me otherwise.
Topher stirred once, barely conscious. “Don’t,” he breathed.
No one asked what he meant. We all knew.
Liora followed Az out, and the Reliquary doors closed behind them.
Damien was chained to one of the iron chairs near the far wall, the bruise on his neck still faintly visible. He had been quiet since we entered the Reliquary. But his eyes never left the black cloth bundle on the floor.
Thyronis stared down at it as if he was offended by the object’s audacity to exist.
I didn’t move. I just left the Book sitting there, waiting.
Morathis looked at me then. “You don’t want to touch it.”
I cut my gaze to her. “I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t need to.”
Vespera’s mouth curved. “I don’t think any of us want to touch it.”
Damien’s chains scraped. “Don’t touch it.” His face had gone pale, as if fear had emptied his body from the inside out.
“Excuse me?” Vespera said.
Damien stared at the bundle. “Don’t touch it.”
Thyronis made an impatient sound. “I am older than your warnings.”
“And yet apparently not wiser than them,” Damien snapped.
Thyronis snapped his attention to Damien, and so did I. Damien’s breathing had changed, faster now, rougher, his gaze locked on the Book like he expected it to open its eyes.
“You think I helped him hide it in that place because I enjoy filth?” he said. “Because I had a sudden fondness for The Velvet Ash? That thing needed to be buried somewhere even Heaven wouldn’t willingly look.”
The gold light pulsed beneath the cloth.
Damien flinched. “There,” he said, voice sharpening. “You see that? It’s listening.”
“Books don’t listen,” Vespera said, rolling her eyes.
“That one does.”
Thyronis bent anyway as Damien surged against the chains. “Don’t.”
But it was too late. Thyronis picked up the Book with his bare hands and tossed it onto the central table. The impact shook the entire Reliquary.
The black cloth fell away, and light exploded from the Book upward.
There was a column of gold so bright it nearly blinded me, washing the room in a radiance that made every glass case throw back warped reflections.
Vespera hissed and turned her face away.
Morathis lifted one hand before her eyes. Even Thyronis blinked.
Damien started laughing. “Brilliant,” he said, voice cracking. “Wonderful. Yes,” He snapped as his voice cracked. “Why don’t you just pick up the phone and call The First Light and tell Him His missing Book is sitting in Lucifer’s trophy room?”
“Damien,” I said.
“No,” he snapped, eyes wild now. “No, you don’t get to say my name like I’m the unreasonable one. I told you. I told all of you. This is why it had to be hidden.”
The Book opened by itself. It simply cracked wide at the center and began to flip through its own pages.
It was fast, too fast as page after page snapped past, each one full of names written in scripts that crawled over one another, ink darkening, fading, rewriting itself in the space between one breath and the next.
The sound was hideous. It wasn’t paper. It sounded like wings flapping, teeth snapping, a flock of small things trying to escape a cage made of language.
Damien pulled harder against his chains. The chair scraped across the floor.