Chapter Sixteen

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

LUCIFER SHOULD have returned to White Mountain, as he'd told Vassago he intended. He'd not lied to the prince. Arcadia was Lucifer's destination.

But, by the Celestials, he was spent, and in no mood for the political strife of White Mountain's halls. The encounter with Azazel's divine magick had stolen something from him, and the strength it had taken to hold back Wrath so that Silas and Vassago could escape the cockaigne, had pushed him over an edge of exhaustion he'd not encountered before.

So he sat in the stench of humanity, in a tea-house in Slaidburn, a small village north of Newchurch-in-Pendle, little more than an hours ride from the cockaigne, and all its tumult.

The woman who owned the tea rooms had approached him after he'd been staring into a cup of black tea for the better part of two hours. His scones untouched, the clotted cream forming a crust. He slipped the trumpeter endlessly between his fingers, the metal cold, its power extinguished. Now, it truly was no more than it appeared: a slender whistle of silver. The cut on his palm, made from the blade of his own vestige as he'd fought to secure the cage, was really the only evidence of the entire debacle. And it made itself known, the skin bright pink and throbbing around the gash.

‘Do you enjoy a hunt, then?' the proprietor had asked on the first day, when she'd mistakenly believed herself worthy of being spoken to.

‘Do you have rooms?' He'd slipped the trumpeter back into his pocket.

She'd smoothed her skirts, unruffled by his brusqueness.

‘Certainly do. There's one sitting empty. Would you like it?'

‘Do you have a library?'

She'd blinked, but barely paused. ‘Not as such, but I can get a hold of some reading material if you'd like. What takes your fancy?'

‘Fairy tales.' Now she blinked again, with an added small smile.

‘Is there a problem?' he'd glowered.

‘No offence intended, my apologies. I just hadn't thought you…never mind.' Smart woman. ‘Fairy tales it is. I'll see what I can do.'

She'd not spoken more than a handful of words to him since. And had brought him several volumes of Grimms' Fairy Tales–which he already had in his private collection at his residence in Arcadia–along with a pile of penny dreadfuls.

For two days he'd lingered. Reading. Sipping black tea. Picking at scones. But never fully falling into the lull of the tales that normally soothed him.

His hand ached.

The gash from his own vestige had not yet healed. Its line across his palm remained: a dirty grey cut with thin veins of black spreading from it. An oddity which concerned him, but one likely to be rectified on his return to Arcadia.

He simply had to decide when that return would be.

Lucifer took another sip of tea, and looked out through the iron-wrought window. The proprietor had shifted the small table and chairs that had occupied this space elsewhere, and moved the armchair he favoured to rest there instead.

He had simply thought to catch his breath, amongst quieter folk. Sit with the dullness of the purebreds, before he presented himself to those of Gimli Hall. Before he took a knee before Enoch's Ophanim throne; the throne beneath which the Creation Flame burned, guarded by the Eternal Wheels which spun in perpetuity, their nekhri surfaces covered in a thousand watchful eyes.

But he'd not been ready for those eyes, or those of the court, who would devour his every word, digest it, and then spew it back at him with a thousand questions. The Higher Angels would not take news of Gabriel's betrayal well. Nor of Iblis's existence, and the scourge of maleficium festering beneath their very noses. He would be challenged; he would face torrid accusations. The angels and daemons held an uneasy alliance. The Archangels would rage. Would always assume a king of Daemonkind sought to extend his power. Would always spoil for a fight.

Who did not, in Arcadia?

He'd be challenged.

Why had Lucifer not called on any Angelic assistance? Had the Lord Enoch truly gifted him the trumpeter, or had Lucifer stolen the Lord's Wrath? What proof did he have that Gabriel was a turncoat?

Lucifer had no idea what support he could rely on from Enoch. Arcadia's master never shared his designs. His workings were unknowable.

And his nature was devastatingly mercurial.

Who was not to say that this would be the moment Arcadia's master would rid himself of a daemon king who knew a dangerous secret?

It was not beyond the realm of possibility that Enoch had not given Lucifer free will out of a genuine desire to allow Seraphiel's plan to fruition, should the fates allow, but to bring about the demise of the one daemon in Arcadia who knew the Lord of Arcadia had killed his favoured angel.

Lucifer drained his tea cup. He'd barely set it down than the woman replaced his tea pot with another. She was remarkable in that way: knowing when a refill was needed, saving him the need to utter a word.

It was Lucifer who used words today. His throat dry with disuse. ‘I wonder if I might have a boiled egg?'

The woman's face brightened. Strange creatures they were. ‘I'll see to it, right away, sir. Toast, too?'

‘No.' Lucifer returned to his penny dreadful, where a dubious barber was breaking necks, so as to make pies.

‘Right then.'

She turned away, but did not move. He shuffled his thin papers, coughing in the hope she'd move out of his space.

‘Can I help you?' Her voice wavered.

Lucifer raised his gaze from one nasty piece of work, to another.

The man who had entered the comfortable rooms cast a silence over all its guests. Tea cups hung halfway to mouths, crumbs remained spilled in laps with hands raised in the process of dusting off but going no further. Only the fire dared to keep crackling.

‘Michael.' Lucifer folded his penny dreadful, placed it carefully upon the table. He wished there had been one more swill of tea to drink so he could delay his rise further. ‘Would you care for tea and scones? An egg perhaps?'

The Seraphim appeared as a mortal man, but made himself no small creature. Imposing and dominant, as the angels were in true form, Micheal was a great bruising chap who'd be more likely to bodyguard a crime gang's leader: hair cropped so short he appeared almost bald, a protruding brow creating a shadow over his dark eyes. Though none of the purebreds could see the angel for who he was, he doubted they'd be more any more fearful if they could. So much threat rippled from the man.

But they were not the target of Michael's ire.

Lucifer poked the proprietor in the shoulder. ‘Go on then, see to those eggs.'

She jumped, muttered something, and left. Or rather, fled. Other customers chose then to leave behind their hot brews and sweet cakes. The strangest thought came to Lucifer as he watched Michael clear the room without uttering a word: how Vassago would have been appalled to see all the cakes so abandoned.

Gods, he must be weary to have such ideas. His hand pulsed with pain.

‘Is there something you'd like to discuss with me, Michael?' He gestured to a now-vacant chair at a neighbouring table. ‘Would you like a seat?'

‘What are you hiding, daemon?'

‘Good day to you too, angel.'

The growl that came would have made the Brothers Grimm proud.

‘Gabriel used his halo to reinforce a cage in that cockaigne,' Michael's words held their own sparks. ‘What did it hold?'

Well, at least he'd not have to prove Gabriel was a duplicitous arsehole. Lucifer had assumed a clean-up crew would arrive at some point, to extract the angel bones from the cockaigne, but he'd thought it would be longer before the Wrath had subdued enough to do so. And that it would be another archangel acting as housekeeper. Michael was the very last angel he'd wished to have here.

‘I saw no prisoner. It was empty.'

‘Liar. Think carefully before you speak again.'

‘Do you not have better things to do than interrupt my breakfast?

Michael moved through the room with the grace of a wrecking ball. Without touching them he swept aside chairs, a table, a pot plant that had the misfortune of dipping its fronds in his way. The angel was barely restrained beneath his human skin.

Lucifer seated himself, and crossed his legs. If he'd not done so he would have likely fallen into his seat anyway. The pain in the wound was astounding.

Pulsing with each step the angel took. Making his vestige, where it was embedded in his finger, hum with discontent.

Michael arrived at Lucifer's side in a heart-beat. His shadow cast itself throughout the entire room, darkening the light coming through the panes. The purebreds always wrote of the angels as creatures of light. The Seraph were brightest of all, but that did not mean there was no blackness to them.

‘I have scried their bones, Lucifer.' He drew three shards of white from his pocket, brandishing them like some macabre fan. A fingerbone was recognisable, but the other two Lucifer could not discern. ‘Azazel lives, his bones hold his secrets, but Gabriel and Iblis…' The blankness of Michael's face made his words ever more chilling. ‘I know what these angels saw as they took their last breath. The Death Wish is not the only power to be found in the pause between life and death, and I amongst my brothers am the most talented with the bones. Vassago does not lie rotting in the abaddon.' He closed his hands around the angel bones. There was a crack, a snap, as he tightened his grip. ‘He does not pay for his sins as he should, does he, daemon?'

Lucifer tried to mimic the angel's blankness, but by the gods he feared he did so none too well. ‘If you are so all-seeing, then I need not answer that.'

The seraph moved with sickening speed, snatching up Lucifer's hand. He cried out in surprised protest, and summoned his flames. The crawl beneath his skin was unpleasant. The burn unusual in how it caused him to shiver.

‘Raise your flame to me, I dare you.' Michael's spittle hit Lucifer's cheeks like chips of ice. ‘Give me another reason to strike you down, here and now, without need for White Mountain's sentence.'

Lucifer sunk the fire deeper beneath his skin. Micheal drew in closer, bringing shadows with him, causing the wood beams to groan as the walls shifted around him.

‘Where is the simurgh, daemon?' He traced his finger around the gash on Lucifer's palm.

‘I left it to Wrath to deal with.' Michael's presence was a terrible pressure on his chest. He struggled to keep his thoughts in a row. If the angel had only witnessed Gabriel's last moments, he could not prove Lucifer's words true or otherwise.

‘Where is the simurgh?'

‘I don't know.' The truth had a way of flowing more easily.

Michael turned the bones to powder in his tight-hold, letting them sift between his fingers and fall down onto the penny dreadful laid out on Lucifer's lap. ‘Iblis and Gabriel deserved what you did to them, they deserved our lord's Wrath. They were traitors, both. But what are you, Lucifer?' His finger kept working in slow ovals around the wound. ‘I saw what they took from your spawn, a prince who should have been put to death the moment he raised his vestige against a Seraph. I saw you bring down an Archangel to protect something that does not belong to you, and might well destroy everything my brothers and I have set in place to contain the halo. Don't be more of a fool, daemon. I know the Cultivation does not remain in that cockaigne.' He brought his hand, white with angel dust, to Lucifer's throat, and wrapped his fingers around it. The pressure he brought to bear forced Lucifer to his feet. Lucifer's innards drew tight with knots. His flame twisted and riled against the fear that swept through them. ‘The madness of Seraphiel has stained you, but it is our mistake not to have paid greater heed to how deeply you were enraptured by him. The lengths you'd go to, to keep his dangerous, fanciful delusion alive. And now, it has killed you.'

‘Perhaps glasses are in order, I'm alive.' Lucifer rasped against the angel's chokehold. ‘And you'd do well to reconsider destroying a King of Daemonkind, one who carries the lord's trumpeter, proof I had his Blessing in this.'

Michael smiled, teeth of purest white gleaming. Slick as blades. ‘Our lord's Blessings come in many shades, so few of them pure. Will he come for you when your suffering becomes too much? And it shall, for you have stood far too close to the Primordial Flame, daemon.' He lifted Lucifer just high enough to ensure his tiptoes only reached the floor with much straining. ‘Where is the simurgh? I'll ask one last time, before I give you no choice.'

‘I told you. I do not know.'

‘No. You don't, do you? I see that now. And more is the pity for you.'

Michael dug his fingers into the wound on Lucifer's palm. The bellow it drew forth must have reached all the way to Arcadia. It certainly cleared the tea-room of lingering guests, who added their own cries to the hue.

Lucifer's roar shook the windowpanes. He sought to ignite his vestige but the angelbone lay stagnant. He shot raw daemonic flame from his other hand, wild and lashing, catching Michael square in the chest.

The blast sent them both flying through the tea rooms front wall.

Michael did not release his clawed hold on Lucifer's hand, and it was impossible to work himself free, no matter how vigorously he tried.

They shot out across the road, and into the open field opposite. ‘Your blood reeks,' Michael snarled in his ear, ‘of forbidden things, daemon.' They carved a deep gully into the earth with the slide of their bodies, churning the grass to nothing as they tumbled and fought. White fire, orange fire, burning the field to a carpet of cinder. ‘Of maleficium and divine magick but it is the stolen fire that shall kill you. It crawls through your blood, and soon you shall know why the Primordial Flame is for the gods' alone.' Michael's hiss gave off steam, his human skin splitting open with the impossible task of holding in all he was. Angelfire poured from the tears. ‘No corporeal creature survives long once touched.'

Lucifer fought, letting his fire surge, great infernal wings fending off the light that sought to douse them. He fought, through fatigue and horror, through something akin to fear, striving to resist the angel's ministrations. But this was a Seraph. One not worn down by all Lucifer had weathered. And Michael had realised it before Lucifer himself. The chaos in that conservatory–in the heart of the Erlking's hidden realm–a storm of maleficium, divine magick and ancient flame, could not be weathered without consequence.

A brilliant burst of Angelfire stole Lucifer's vision. It was a fleeting moment, and it was all Michael needed.

The Seraph pinned him down, shoving himself between Lucifer's legs. Crushing his fire into the earth.

He tore at his trouser leg.

‘The thigh, was it not?' Michael hung like a sun above him. ‘That is where they took the piece from you that made him, if I recall.'

Lucifer opened his mouth to protest, and Michael shattered his jaw with a casual strike from an Angelic wing. The break was nasty, and would be slow to heal. But with that strike Michael had rid Lucifer of any lingering doubts; he'd do anything in his power to see Vassago afforded the chance to test Seraphiel's Cultivation now. Lucifer did not take kindly to this sanctimonious prick's bullish behaviour.

Michael dug his fingers into Lucifer's human flesh, sinking them into the daemonstone beneath, and the scar embedded there; the place where Lord Enoch's blade had cut away Lucifer's flesh and cast the piece into the Creation Flames, so a new Dominion Prince could be made.

Michael leaned on him, crushing bone and lungs and all those feeble vessels of humanity.

‘You could have just taken me to him, Lucifer. Avoided all this unpleasantness,' he said, his brilliance glancing against the low lie of the clouds. ‘I see it very clearly now.' He slumped back onto his heels, holding Lucifer's scarred daemonstone like some rocky heart in his hand. ‘That day upon the cliff was a result of my brother, the fool, becoming the architect of his own demise. The Cultivation is in the Dominion Prince. And Seraphiel lost control of his creation.' He shook his head, and it was like a shower of stars. He studied the piece of Lucifer he held. ‘Now I will see that Cultivation destroyed. This entire, farcical episode shall be done with. And this piece of the sire shall lead me to the wretched spawn. I will see your crown stripped from you for your part in all this, Lucifer. You will pay for your blind devotion.'

He pressed down on the place where he had dug part of Lucifer away, pushing himself to his feet.

And when he swept his wings, he let them crash their way across Lucifer's body, striking him from importance. From consciousness.

In one final act of degradation, he stooped and grabbed Lucifer's finger, where the vestige burned like a hot ember in his nail. Despite all his attempts during the battle, Lucifer's vestige had not ignited as it should; had not amplify his daemonflame to give him greater defence against an all-powerful angel. Michael snapped the finger so decisively the entire digit broke free with a clean tear of flesh.

The Seraph rose, the brightest star in a sky not yet touched by any other. And blackness stole Lucifer from his senses.

He had no inkling of how long he lay there. Half pressed into the earth, shattered and picked at like carrion. Long enough to know some of his bones had healed, but far from enough. The faint tinkling of bells found its way into his dazed mind.

‘Gods,' he breathed, through swollen lips and throat, but grateful he could speak at all, his jaw bone having knitted its break.

His eyes fluttered open, and even his lashes seemed to ache.

A new darkness presented itself to him. A darkness that moved. Nudged at him. Snorted in his aching face. Touched at his torn-open hand with a hoof studded with nails.

Lucifer sat up, far too quickly, finding every rib not yet knit together, and collarbones that poked at flesh where they really shouldn't.

The Dullahan's black stallion screamed, every bit the war horse.

Chollima went to his knees, lowering his great bulk to the ground, tossing his head, sending the reigns to within Lucifer's reach. The message was crystal clear. Get on.

‘I mount, and then what?' Lucifer wheezed, dreading the punishment that would come with trying to get to his knees, let alone his feet.

‘He's a horse. Fae horse, sure, but not going to talk back to you.' The rather shrill voice belonged to the tiny creature sitting on the pommel of Chollima's saddle. A pixie, if Lucifer was guessing correctly. One that looked to be several twigs twisted around one another. ‘Are we going to find him or not? You are looking for Silas Mercer, aren't you?'

Was he? If he wished to find Vassago, then the answer was yes. He doubted Enoch himself could separate the two. But maybe Lucifer was best to just stay here, like an old stump rotting in the soil; let his wounds heal over and let the rest play out, without his hand in it. Allow Michael to go ahead and, as the angel had described it, let this entire, farcical episode be done with.

The stallion knocked at him again, down low and far too close to where there was a damned great hole in Lucifer's thigh. The tinkling of tiny bells was evident again.

‘Stop it,' he snapped.

‘He wants you to get up.' There was more than one piskie in the horse's mane. This second one was woven from stouter sticks, with three dew drop eyes and white flower petals in some semblance of hair.

‘I'm well aware,' Lucifer snarled.

‘Then why aren't you moving?'

‘I would say that is self-evident.'

‘Bit beaten up, aren't you?' This came from a hobgoblin of all things, peeking from behind a refuge of ploughed earth. ‘Scruffy, dirty too. But we probably don't have time for bathing. The angel flew off pretty fast.'

Lucifer cursed at the waning afternoon that settled around him. ‘How long ago?'

Several gnomes pushed their heads from the soil, which formed peaked caps on their heads. ‘‘Not more than ten minutes,' one of them said. ‘Are we going?'

‘Going where?' Lucifer's voice lifted with tired exasperation. ‘How can the likes of you find them?'

A plethora of indignant gasps erupted from the ever-widening audience, the bells tinkling madly. ‘Just as well we aren't doing this for your sake. The likes of us are all too small to be noticed by the likes of you. That's how we can find them. Because no one gives a damn if we see things or not.'

‘Also, Chollima used to be ridden by him who is the Erlking, but the horse is free now. Still carries the duty-bind to the ankou, though. So that helps.'

Lucifer had not one ounce of energy to correct them on the fact Chollima's rider, the headless horseman, was no king. He sat with both hands cradled in his lap, one with its amputation, the other with its crippling cut. Both now cauterised, both still aching. This was likely the most rotten he'd felt in all his long years.

‘And,' another of the gnomes chimed in, ‘the kodama will send word through the trees to guide us. Them boys saved the Forest of Dean after all, so the trees like them a lot, which means we'll know the shortest way. Least we can do for those fellows.'

The hobgoblin bravely stepped from behind his pile of dirt. ‘Them angels killed my second cousin, six times removed, down Mordiford way, too. Tried to blame it on that daemon the ankou likes, dirty rotten scoundrels.'

A crowd, a human crowd, was gathering on the far side of the field, the faint murmur of voices reaching him. The very last thing Lucifer wished to do was find himself trapped amongst frantic village folk. They had a history of using pitchforks to stab at anything they did not understand, and he was done with being the object of assault.

The tinkling of tiny bells drew his attention back to his smaller audience. Chollima's reins were held aloft by a small group of ethereal little creatures, no bigger than the finger that Lucifer had lost, and with silver hair that flowed like quicksilver down their backs, the strands tinkling like bells. Peri. He should have guessed from the bells, but the nymph-fae hybrids were such rare folk he'd never glimpsed one.

A string of peri held Chollima's reins aloft, so that they dangled as though held by an invisible rider.

Lucifer groaned, at himself, more than at the presumptive creatures.

The blame for this entire, farcical episode, must, in great part, be laid at Lucifer's own feet. His actions had revived an angel's harebrained scheme.

Lucifer should have laid everything to rest, Seraphiel included.

Should have; but could not. Even now, barely conscious, he intended to chase after a Seraph. Mad, did not adequately define him.

Lucifer crawled on hands and knees to where the Dullahan's black stallion sat waiting. He took Chollima's reins from the peri, who made music as they fluttered away.

With an undignified amount of assistance from this strange gaggle of creatures, he dragged himself onto the back of the black stallion. And did his level best not to pass out as the horse galloped him away.