Chapter Thirty-Six - Lucifer #2
“It’s looking,” he said.
Morathis turned her head slightly. “For what?”
“For anything stupid enough to look back.” His eyes cut to me. “For him. For her. For whatever name you keep pretending isn’t a leash.”
The pages whipped faster. Then the Book stopped. Not on a page, but in a direction. Its open spine angled sharply toward the far wall of the Reliquary. Toward the shallow drawer beneath the second case.
Damien went utterly still. Then his face changed.
“Fuck,” he whispered.
Vespera’s gaze followed the angle of the Book. “What’s over there?”
I didn’t answer. Damien looked at me. He knew then. Because he’d gone with me to get it, and now he was afraid.
“You… kept it?” he asked.
The Book’s pages rustled, though there was no wind, like it was waiting and hungry.
“Lucifer,” Damien said, voice lowering. “Please tell me you didn’t fucking keep it.”
“Of course I did,” I said.
His eyes widened.
Morathis turned slowly toward me. “A page from this Book?”
“Yes.”
Damien’s laugh came out broken. “Of course,” he said. “Of course you did. Of course, you kept a page from the one thing in creation that collects names like chains and thought. Of course, your first thought was, ‘Surely, this belongs in my basement.’”
“It was protected.”
“It was bait,” Damien snapped. “Or a wound. Or both.”
The Book began flipping again, slower now, agitated. Searching. Snapping forward and back as if it had scented something it had been denied for too long.
Damien jerked against his chains. “You need to put the cloth back over it.”
Thyronis looked at him. “Too late.”
“No,” Damien said. “It is never too late with something like that.”
The drawer scratched softly. Damien heard it and went white. “Don’t give it the page.”
Morathis looked at him. “Why?”
“Because it wants it.”
“That is not always reason to refuse.”
“It is when the thing wanting is older than truth.”
The Book snapped another page. Then another. Toward the drawer.
I crossed the room.
Damien strained forward. “Lucifer. Please.”
I ignored him.
“Lucifer.” His voice cracked on it this time.
I opened the drawer. Inside lay the black cloth bundle. It was so small, and it looked harmless, which was obviously a lie. Because the moment I lifted it, the Book on the table reacted.
Its pages burst into motion, flapping wildly, not flipping but beating open and shut, open and shut, as if the entire thing had become a mouth.
Damien made a harsh sound. “That,” he said. “That is what it did in the Maw. That is what it did when Topher got too close. That is why I helped him hide it where filth could smother the scent.”
I unwrapped the cloth slowly, and the ink still shifted in restless black-gold lines, one name after another surfacing and vanishing before I could read them fully.
But one word rose through the ink for a heartbeat longer—Auctrix. Then it vanished. Damien saw it. So did Morathis.
The Book went frantic.
Damien’s chair slammed back against the wall as he pulled at the bindings. “Put it away,” he said. “Lucifer, listen to me for once in your very long, very arrogant life. Put it away. Fucking hell!”
I ignored him and walked toward the table. The gold light crawled up my boots. The Book’s pages opened and shut faster, faster, until I could barely see them, only a blur of names and white-gold fire.
Damien’s voice went hoarse. “That page could do anything. It might open a door straight to Him.”
I stopped. Morathis looked at him. Thyronis did too.
I turned my head slowly. “What did you say?”
Damien swallowed. His throat was still faintly bruised from my hand, and the movement looked painful. Good. I wanted him uncomfortable, but I didn’t want him terrified, yet there he was.
“The Book doesn’t just record names,” he said. “It knows where they belong. Where they can be reached.” His eyes cut to the page. “I’ve heard things… Old things. Things like these pages are roads. That torn page could be a missing road.”
Vespera’s face lost all humor. “And putting it back?” she asked.
Damien’s laugh was sharp and empty. “Maybe it closes the road.” His eyes met mine. “Or maybe it gives the Book back the map. I don’t know.”
The page twitched in my hand. The Book snapped open so hard the table cracked across the center.
Damien’s voice dropped. “This is why it needed to stay hidden.”
I stared at the Book. Then at the page. Then at Damien. “Hidden is not the same as safe.”
“No,” he said. “But neither is found.”
For once, the bastard had a point. Unfortunately, the page in my hand had grown hot enough to burn through the cloth. And then the Book opened wider as if it was waiting.
Morathis said, “That is beginning to feel like a theme.”
Thyronis moved to the other side of the table, eyes fixed on the Book. “It will not wait much longer.”
“It’ll wait because I say it will.”
The Book snapped open so violently that the table cracked further beneath it. Vespera inhaled sharply.
I smiled without warmth. “Rude.”
Then, as if it had heard me, the Book stopped. The pages fell still for a moment. Then, they began to turn, slowly.
Then they turned slowly and deliberately back through themselves. Past names human and demonic and angelic and more. Past pages crowded with lives already lived and births not yet arrived. Past ink that recoiled from my gaze before I could understand it.
Then it reached the wound. The missing section sat near the center, edges jagged and luminous, as if the Book had been torn and never stopped bleeding light from the place where she had been removed.
The page in my hands grew even hotter, and I stepped closer. No one breathed as I laid the page over the wound. The Book suddenly inhaled, and the sound went through me, then through the entire room.
The torn edges of the Book lifted as gold threads rose from the binding and pierced the page. It bucked once beneath my hand, but I held it there. The ink on the page scattered.
Names erupted across it, thousands of them, too fast to read. There were symbols that hurt to see. Then they collapsed inward, spiraling toward the center until the page went completely blank.
My blood went cold. Then one line appeared. It wasn’t a name. It was two pale curls rising from mirrored tongues of flame, slender and elegant, each one bending inward before tapering to a sharp point. A sigil I did not know.
Morathis made a soft sound. Thyronis leaned closer. And then the Book snapped shut, and the light vanished. The sudden darkness hit like a blow. It lay on the cracked table, closed and still, its black cover dull now, gold veins gone dark beneath its surface, as if it were satisfied.
Vespera broke the silence first. “Well,” she said, voice low. “That was horrifying.”
Thyronis stared at the Book. “It accepted the page.”
Morathis looked at Thyronis, then at me. “No,” she said softly.
I looked at her. “What?”
“It did not accept it.”
The Book pulsed once, deep inside the cover.
Morathis’s expression darkened. “It recognized it.”
Damien was breathing too fast. “That should satisfy every idiot in this room,” he said. “Put it away.”
I reached for the black cloth and covered the Book again. This time, the cloth didn’t smoke. It only settled over the cover like a shroud. And for a foolish moment, I thought it might be done with us.
Then the Book pulsed beneath the cloth, like a thing waiting, once, patiently.
Morathis looked at it. “It is still awake.”
“I noticed.”
“It may answer if asked properly.”
Damien’s eyes snapped to her. “Do not encourage him.”
Thyronis ignored him. “The Book searches through anchors.”
“Names,” Morathis said. “Blood. Memory. Creation. Binding. Title. Anything true enough to point.”
Vespera stared at the covered Book. “Charming.”
Damien’s chains scraped as he tried to stand. “I am begging you, which I do not enjoy, to stop treating this like research.”
I looked at the Book. “Take the cloth off,” I said.
Damien made a sound like I had stabbed him. “Lucifer, He is going to know.”
I ignored him. “Let Him.”
Thyronis removed the cloth as Damien cursed under his breath.
But the Book didn’t erupt this time. Instead, it opened slowly.
The pages turned by themselves until Evie’s page lay there, now sealed into the binding.
The edges were still visible, stitched with threads of gold that looked too much like scar tissue.
The page itself was pale, almost translucent, the ink moving beneath the surface as if words were swimming in deep water.
At the top, a name appeared. Ediphiel.
My throat tightened as the ink shifted. The name thinned, blurred, and beneath it another word rose like something surfacing through dark water.
Auctrix.
Morathis inhaled softly. Then the word vanished. In its place, lines wrote themselves in black-gold ink.
Record incomplete.
Origin: unrecorded.
Binding: broken.
Claim: denied.
No one spoke, not for several breaths.
Then Vespera said, softly, “Claim denied.”
My hand gripped the edge of the table. The wood cracked beneath my fingers. Damien went very still.
“What does that mean?” he asked.
Morathis did not look away from the page. “It means He no longer has what He thought He had.”
The Book trembled once beneath the weight of the sentence. I stared at the page, and I should have felt relief. I felt only the awful shape of another question forming.
“Search me,” I said.
Damien went pale again. “No.”
Vespera’s eyes cut to me. “Lucifer.”
“I—I need to know.”
“You never need to know anything safely,” she said. “That is one of your worst habits.”
Thyronis’s expression shifted slightly, almost interest.
Morathis watched me with dark, unreadable eyes.
“The Book needs an anchor,” she said.
“I have several.”
I placed one hand on the table.
The Book reacted at once. Pages turned. Fast, but not frenzied. Searching.
Lucifer
Morning Star
Lightbringer
Samael
Shaitan
Iblis
Ahriman
Angra Mainyu
The Adversary
The Accuser
The Serpent
The Dragon
King of Hell
Prince of Darkness
Lord of the Pit
The Fallen One
The First Rebel
The Devil
…