Chapter Twenty-Six

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

SERAPHIEL. BUT how in the Celestial's name was such a resurrection possible?

Lucifer's mind rioted as he held the gaze of the angel he was so certain he'd lost. He searched, for sign of foul play, deception…anything that might explain the strangeness, the utter improbability of what was happening.

‘Bring him to me, Lucifer. Am I not heard?'

‘You are very much heard.' Lucifer forced the words clear. ‘But that does not mean I understand what is happening here.'

Seraphiel stared unblinking, unwavering. And instantly recognisable. This golden-haired reiteration of his form was one Lucifer knew well. The angel had worn this suit of flesh on the occasions he'd lured Lucifer to the human realm with promises of new-found libraries to explore. He'd worn it as they sat beside fierce hearth fires, with aperitifs in hand; perhaps Seraphiel's head upon his shoulder, the angel exhausted by his driving obsession with Blood Lake's legacy.

The pair of them close, but never intimate; as Lucifer preferred, and Seraphiel tolerated.

But this could not be his Antinous. Lucifer had been there when Enoch delivered the killing blow, one delivered at Seraphiel's begged behest.

The angel had died. Lucifer had tasted grief ever since.

But there in the dazzling glow of his white eyes was the aura Lucifer mourned.

‘One last chance. That is what this is. What you have given me.' Seraphiel did not sound as ethereal as he recalled; there was a plaintive note where none had existed before. The angel finally shifted his gaze, watching as the purebred grasped the prophet beneath the arms, seeking to drag the unconscious man away. The tiny miscreant levelled Seraphiel with a most impressive look of defiance, as though daring the angel to make any attempt to stop him. Impressive, considering how diminutive the puny creature was.

‘Charlie, careful now.' The ankou of course; ever careful with his purebreds. But more so with his daemon. Silas did not leave Vassago's side, shielding the Dominion prince with his great bulk. The ankou's devotion to the daemon was as mysterious as the presence of a living, breathing angel in the bed.

‘I will not leave him just lying on the floor.' Charlie hefted the prophet's arm about his shoulders, using his curious strength to lift the man, as though he were only an empty hessian sack. ‘He needs help, Silas.'

Seraphiel watched, his spine stiff, his hands slack in his lap. He'd only moved to turn his head so far, like a beautiful automaton.

‘Take him, Jacquetta,' Seraphiel said, and the Child fairly flew to her feet. ‘The prophet has served me well. Perhaps use the east wing, there's a decent view of the loch there. And that hearth doesn't smoke so badly as the rest.'

Lucifer frowned, trying still to make sense of all that was happening.

‘Yes, your grace. At once.'

‘Food, if you have some. The purebreds require much of it. Some quail perhaps? With roasted potatoes? Do we still have that Rhenish wine in the cellar? Decent drop, that one.'

‘Yes, your grace.' Jacquetta bobbed. ‘I'll see to it.'

But Lucifer noted the subtle consternation on her face. As builder of the Sanctuary, Jacquetta knew the instability of the Seraph. She likely knew her master, as well as Lucifer himself.

‘Right then, off you go.' Now Seraphiel lifted his hand. But the wave he gave was limp, his fingers hanging, the shift of his wrist floppy. ‘I have things to do.'

Lucifer frowned, a lick of alarm finding him. In this ill-placed conversation he recognised something of the angel he'd known at the end, the creature whose mind had been slipping towards madness. Seraphiel would go from godly and fearsome, to speaking of the fineness of the weather, and his yearning for a plate of decent oysters, in the tick of a clock. As though he believed himself truly human, forgetting his divinity.

Lucifer acknowledged the glance the Child sent his way, as she shepherded Charlie and the prophet from the room.

‘Do you need the chair?' The boy with cornflower blue eyes asked of his companion.

‘No, not now. I can walk. But Christ, I'm hungry,' the one named Edward moaned. Which seemed to please the other one no end. He laughed and grasped him in one of the infernal hugs the purebreds favoured.

‘Then you shall eat till you burst, sweetheart.'

‘Where are they being taken?' Silas was not so keen about their exit, of course he was not. His propensity for trepidation must have been what killed him in the first place, Lucifer decided.

‘It's alright, Silas. I don't think we are important enough to concern them anymore.' The small purebred was vastly intelligent. ‘Keep each other safe, boys. And if you call, I'll come running.' An odd look crossed his face, as though struck by sudden revelation. ‘We always do, don't we? The loch binds us…my family…to you. I was always meant to help you.'

‘You never let me down. You shall always hear my call.' The big man had a way of softening that turned him from formidable to marshmallow in a heartbeat. He was all mush now. ‘Scarlet, go with them, will you? It would ease our worries.'

The damned fellow couldn't even find it in himself to order about a paltry wisp. Silas was insipid, considerate and moderate, a blunderer who had managed to turn a wretched daemon blithe. Vassago was no longer mindless with violence. The Cultivation was not his master, and he was not its jailer. There would be no repeat of that day upon the cliff, over the Lethe River. Not while the ankou survived.

For the first time since the Dominion Prince's creation, Lucifer considered him worthy of the throne of Daemonkind.

The wisp nearly startled the wits out of Lucifer. It hovered in front of him, those ghastly stationery eyes even more disconcerting than the Seraph's. It bobbed in a curious curtsy, blew him an unwelcome kiss, and darted away.

He would not watch the blasted thing leave. It mattered not a jot if he saw it again.

Not a jot.

‘Seraphiel.' Lucifer returned to the angel, who studied his own hands, eyes still shining like full moons. The Seraph had barely even glanced at Vassago.

At the prince who held the simurgh. The entire reason for all of this.

‘Will you explain what I am seeing here? You are dead. I watched you die. I held your corpse.' The reflection scalded his tongue; the pain of that day had never subsided. Lucifer swallowed hard. Gods, he needed to sit down before he fell down, but he'd be damned if he'd show signs of weakness here. ‘But I know this to be you. How has the prophet's kiss brought you back?'

‘It merely released what had not yet gone.' Seraphiel peered at him, the same drilling way he'd always done. ‘Are you well, Lucifer?'

‘Answer my question reasonably.' He'd never feared the Seraph the way many in White Mountain had, and he'd be damned if he'd fear this spectre. ‘What was in that pendant watch I delivered?'

‘You are not well,' Seraphiel said, not quite a question, but not a statement either. And his staring was infernally annoying.

Of course Lucifer was not well. He'd sustained deep wounds from a Seraphim, among other injuries, but what importance did that hold now? Lucifer had Seraphiel's eyes upon him, but he knew the ankou watched carefully, too. He only hoped Death's Messenger would keep his damned bearded mouth shut about what he likely knew of a king's condition.

‘ Seraphiel!' Lucifer lost his thin patience. ‘Answer me. How are you here?'

The angel's stare returned to him, this time with a familiar twitch of impatience at his jaw.

‘Because of you. You delivered the watch and preserved the vessel that held my Cultivation.'

‘Mind what you say, angel.' Silas's admonishment would have seen him imprisoned in Arcadia. ‘Address the prince by his name. He is far more than your vessel.'

‘Silas, it's all right. Leave it be.' Vassago played peacekeeper. A role he'd not worn once in four hundred years.

‘I'll not have them speak of you in such a way.'

But Lucifer did not have time for their pitiful defence of one another. He was interested in the angel alone. ‘You are explaining nothing, Seraphiel. If I did not hold your corpse in my arms that day, then what the bloody hell was it?'

‘Our Lord Enoch did what had to be done, but I had foreseen such a day arriving.'

‘A day you would die?'

‘Yes. The Seraph are not immortal, you know that.' The angel's gaze finally found the prince, but there seemed no great recognition, no acknowledgement of all he had worked for, standing before him. ‘I knew myself tainted. Samyaza's curse upon the waters of Blood Lake makes it deadly for any of the Seraph. But I had worked so long on my Cultivations and knew none of them strong enough to withstand the lake. I needed something extraordinary to fortify my work. I needed a drop…just a drop of those waters, Luci, that was all.' He spoke to Lucifer, but he looked only to Vassago. Silas glared, one arm thrown to shield the prince's body. ‘And then I would finally have what I needed to bring that traitor down.'

Lucifer dared to stand, tested his trembling legs, and found them wanting. ‘But that was not all you needed, was it, Raph? You stole the Primordial Flame, you great fool, and Michael knows of it. He searches for this place. Why would you do such a thing? Little wonder, you are…' he hesitated. ‘You are not what you once were.'

Lucifer looked away, determined none would see any hint of his pain. He felt the flame's poison eating at him. He felt every one of his wounds, even down to the infinitesimal bruise on the tip of his nose from the wisp. He felt bloody awful. Lucifer was no god; Michael was right in that. But he was no lesser daemon either. His fight would be to the last.

He lifted his head to find himself once again scrutinised by the angel. Seraphiel had not moved, nor made an attempt to do so, sitting like a bed-bound invalid, but he could pin a man down, nonetheless.

‘You know of the Primordial Flame?'

Lucifer cursed himself for the furtive glance he directed at Silas, but Vassago mistook the look as meant for him.

‘I am aware the simurgh holds the flame.' He was sharp, vigilant. ‘Now I am to believe the water of Blood Lake in me also?'

‘Not believe, but know.' Seraphiel addressed the prince for the first time. ‘For it is so. The adversaries of water and flame, forced into allegiance.'

‘And it killed you.' Lucifer gave in to the need to brace himself against the chair. He'd thought to move to the bed, but just the notion of lifting his violated leg up to the platform had him sickened.

Seraphiel bunched the linen in his hand, frowning down at it. As though he could not recall the next step necessary to get out of bed. ‘Much of me, yes. That which was rotted, and wasted away. But I had thought myself clever. I thought this piece I saved, to be pure. But now…I fear you and I are as broken as each other, Luci.' He lifted the covers, pushing them clear. Seraphiel moved with wooden slowness, making his way slowly to where he could slip his legs over the edge of the bed, and touch his feet to the floor. The angel sat there, back straight as though a corset lay below his simple linen nightgown, but still clutched at the hanging, as though he might deflate at any moment. Lucifer desired to go to him, to aid him, but to let go of the armchair was to fall flat on his face.

What a miserable pair they were. Antinous and Hadrian would be appalled to know their names adopted by such dismal creatures.

‘What do you mean, piece?' Vassago, in contrast, was robust. Demanding. ‘What did you do to Edward, you bastard?'

Seraphiel concentrated on his feet, as though trying to understand what next to do with them. It made Lucifer's chest ache all the more. ‘The prophet received a blessing from me, Prince of Arcadia. One spark of my Creation Flame existing and thriving inside him, should all else start to wither and die. As it did. The watch held the spellwork I would use to set the wheels in motion, should there come a time when all that remained of my presence lay in that purebred man.'

‘You placed Angelic creation fire in Edward?' Vassago fumed. ‘You thought a simple man, a purebred, could withstand the likes of you?'

Seraphiel turned his head. His scrutiny was intense, the vibrancy of his eyes intensifying. ‘He'd weathered my possession often enough. I knew him strong, and capable of surviving. In the short term at least, albeit the end would be grisly –'

‘You drove him fucking mad.' Vassago pushed free of Silas's wary protection. ‘But you let me believe it was my doing. I cannot count the number of ways I despise you.'

Seraphiel found his feet. He stood and the wood cracked beneath him. The room shook. Lucifer dug his nails into the leather, the ghost-feel of his lost finger there to taunt him.

‘I do not need, nor desire, your devotion, Dominion.' The angel stepped down onto the tiles, and a long, winding crack ran across the room, stopping where Vassago stood with fists clenched and his revulsion unconcealed. ‘Your hatred is even less of a concern to me. What I have done here is far greater than you, or your purebred, or this cretinous ankou.' His gaze shifted to Silas. ‘There is something peculiar in you. Go. There is no need of you, anymore.'

Lucifer winced. And not solely from the pain. If he'd needed any convincing this was truly Seraphiel, it was gone now. The Seraph were blunt, arrogant creatures. Focused servants of the Lord who stood just one step below the Celestials. Seraphiel would truly believe he could dismiss Silas Mercer with a simple word.

‘He will not leave me,' Vassago said, cool with certainty. No hint of his flame. ‘And you are not his master.'

‘But I am yours. Step forward. Let me see the Cultivation.'

The prince's smile held no warmth, and lifted only one corner of his mouth. ‘You are the simurgh's master, not mine. I have done as you designed. I have carried your freakish child, and now I deliver it to you. So take your fucking bird, and then piss off and die, completely this time.'

Seraphiel stood so rigidly, so without hint of whether his ire was raised. Lucifer had been able to read the Seraph well, but this was not the whole creature he had known.

‘Death is a certainty for all, save the gods,' Seraphiel said. ‘Or does the ankou promise you otherwise, so you shall warm his bed, just as I promised you pleasures that no other incubus had known, so you would fall into mine?' He tossed his head, sending the gold shimmering in his hair. ‘You were so very easy to manipulate.'

Lucifer shifted the weight on his feet, wishing this throwing of insults over, so he could sit down and nurse his pains. He braced, thinking that even Vassago's newfound discipline would not withstand these insults. But no unfurling of daemonic flame came.

The prince tilted his head, biting at absurdly plump, pink lips. ‘I was, yes. But you have been an ugly sleeping beauty for a while now. You shall find me much changed.'

‘Then all is lost, if you are not still wild.'

Seraphiel slumped, all the stiffness going from him. He collapsed and Lucifer found himself moving. Reaching. Catching at the angel before he toppled. Fighting his way through a flare of golden-hair to ease him onto the bed once more. There was no gratitude to be found.

‘Leave me,' Seraphiel said, petulant and utterly like himself. Trying to rise again. ‘I am not broken. If you'd done as I asked sooner, I'd not be like a mummy just unwrapped from their sarcophagus. Too much time has passed.'

Lucifer would have flung insult right back at the angel, in distant times, and they would have parried back and forth. But he had little strength for such things now. ‘We are here now. Vassago brings you the simurgh.'

‘Did I call it that, Luci?' The angel pressed at his temple, his demeanour shifting swiftly as a wind-change. Gone was the imperious Seraph, returned was the simpler creature. ‘Is that what I have made? A simurgh?'

Lucifer saw the look that passed between Silas and Vassago. One laced with more than a little desperation.

‘What the fuck is wrong with him?' Vassago demanded. ‘Why did he say all is lost?'

‘Just give him a moment,' Lucifer replied.

‘We keep being told we don't have any left to give.'

Seraphiel's head jerked, and he turned to find Vassago. ‘The prince. You are here.' He looked back at Lucifer, eyes like starpoints. ‘Do you see, Luci? I told you he was strong. That he was the one. Your spawn. The vessel could only ever come from one of your bloodline, for that is where might lies. Do you remember I said so?'

‘I do.' Lucifer's very tired heart sank a little further. ‘But you have seen Prince Vassago already this day.'

The angel's features shifted with their first semblance of emotion. ‘I have, haven't I? I recall now. He has the Cultivation with him. He has an ankou with him. Strange fellow.'

‘He brings the Cultivation, yes. Though I fear it has been damaged. There was an incident…with an Archangel, and the Exarch, and…' He went no further. So he would tell no lies. His decision to bring Wrath upon the cockaigne had nearly prevented this moment existing at all.

‘Was it they who hurt you, Luci? You are dying.' Ever blunt. Empathy barely a smear.

Vassago swore, but the ankou quietened him.

‘No, no, it was not them. And I shall heal.' Even as he spoke, Lucifer's body rotted, but now more than ever there was need to keep his wits. For the angel was barely holding onto his. ‘Do not focus on that. The simurgh, the Cultivation, is what is important. And you will need to see to it, before you send it into the lake.'

‘With the prince who is no longer a Berserker, there may be no point.'

‘Tell me what you mean,' Vassago said. He and Silas moved closer, cautious, and with the ankou's tension seeping from him. His shadow held court upon the floor, darkening the cracks that Seraphiel had made.

‘You said you have changed.' The angel still held his rigid pose. As though he could not shift from the laid out position they'd found him in. Perhaps it truly had been too long. ‘If he is no longer wild–the mad prince–if he has lost his lust for blood and violence, then he is not enough for a lake that holds little else. The Cultivation's power comes from the strength he provides, and he is made stronger for its power. A symbiosis I sought to perfect.'

Seraphiel had found coherence, but how long it would last this time, Lucifer could only guess.

‘So I am not just your vessel.' Vassago's voice cracked the silence. ‘I am your entire monster, after all.'

Resignation underscored his words, and Lucifer knew from the downcast look on Silas's face that both these fools had believed this was a simple case of delivering the simurgh, and being done.

‘Did you care to be anything else?' Seraphiel's eyes cast a glow over the bed linen as he found the prince. ‘It never seemed so to me. You were voracious in all appetites, and made no apology for it.'

The ankou was utterly predictable in his interference. ‘He has always been more than what you assumed of him.'

‘He shall need to be.'

‘Is there no other way?' Silas pressed. ‘He must enter the lake?'

Seraphiel shifted his shoulders, there was no flexibility there for him, so he moved like one stuck in a strait-jacket. ‘Of course he must enter Blood Lake, there was never any other way. How else shall he destroy the halo? What fool question is that?'

Vassago chewed at his bottom lip, his arms crossed at his belly. The ankou looked evermore like a dark thundercloud, though he gathered the prince into his arms with a butterfly's delicacy.

Neither of the fools said a word.

No one did, until Seraphiel turned to Lucifer, his mouth twisted with indignation.

‘Why am I in bedclothes, Luci?' His hair moved like spiderweb in a breeze. ‘I have no need for sleep. Get me up at once.'

Lucifer's exhaustion swept him anew. His own injuries drained him, but it was the ruin of the angel that made his knees weakest of all. Seraphiel hung by a delicate thread to the life he had reclaimed; his mind as damaged as it had ever been.

He could not look at Vassago. For he knew what he'd see there. Doubt, prickly as a rash from the sun. What hope did this Cultivation have, in light of its creators failing state?

Lucifer said nothing, merely nodded, when the ankou brought the vacant wheelchair to the side of the bed, and lifted the curt and exacting angel onto its seat, saying nothing as Seraphiel ordered him as if he were a valet, and not a lord of death.

Lucifer stood, teeth ground against his revolting pains, grateful for the handles against which he could brace himself. He refused an offer from Silas to wheel the snappish angel to the north wing; where a dressing room he preferred was located. The journey sounded torturous, but what was a few more arduous steps?

‘No. I have him.'

After all, Seraphiel had said it plainly enough. He was only here, because of you.

Lucifer had begun this; now he must survive until the game played out to its end.