Chapter Thirty-Four

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

FOR A frail creature Seraphiel held significant weight. Lucifer struggled as he moved him from the ballroom, where he had collapsed beneath the chandelier of bone flowers, with an obsidian mirror clutched tight in his grip. Lucifer could not loosen it when he gathered up the angel; Seraphiel snarling like a rapid dog until he desisted. The ground and walls trembled, as though a great storm churned beyond the windows. One blow had been violent enough to rattle all the chandeliers in the ballroom. But he knew it was no natural storm.

Lucifer leaned heavily upon his walking cane, whilst trying to keep the angel upright and moving, in a palace that seemed set to shake itself apart.

‘Jacquetta!' Lucifer bellowed, not for the first time. ‘Blast you. Come and guide me.'

Seraphiel was a muttering imbecile, and Michael held the Sanctuary's Ferryman hostage.

This was not a fortuitous day.

And this damned labyrinth of a palace bamboozled him. He wished to return Seraphiel to the bedroom he'd been found in, the same bed Lucifer had been relegated to–at the angel's insistence–after his blood was taken for the Cultivation. But he was damned if he could recall which hallway led there. So far he'd only discovered sitting rooms with no settees, a dining room with lavishly cushioned chairs, and another bloody music room; the piano covered in a sheet of delicate golden lace. None of the rooms, save perhaps for the dining room where he might have laid the angel out on the table, had anything remotely suitable for reclining the failing Seraph.

Glassware rattled in buffets and ever-present ferns shivered in their pots, as yet another blow struck.

‘Coming, your majesty!'

At long last, Jacquetta appeared, running down the length of yet another corridor that seemed to have no end. Lucifer longed for his simpler confines in the Arcadian Siltron Ranges, his tower of retreat, with a handful of rooms, beautiful for their plainness. Seraphiel had always pushed for elaborate redecoration, but grandeur made Lucifer's head ache.

‘Where have you been?' Lucifer glowered. ‘Where are his grace's rooms? He must be in his bed.'

‘This way, your majesty.'

He did not like the haunted look on the Child's face; she knew things he was not going to enjoy hearing.

‘Quickly,' he hissed.

The angel found some strength and tried to wriggle from Lucifer's gathered embrace. ‘No time…Luci…he will ruin it all.'

‘Stay still, blast you, or you'll put us both on our arses.'

Lucifer was dizzy, among many other things. The blood Seraphiel had taken from him to repair and fortify the Cultivation was not regenerating. He was drained and was not filling. He'd hardly expected to feel sprightly after such a taxing undertaking being performed upon his beleaguered, dying body, but he'd never had a day in his long life where he did not feel strong.

This was the first.

Still, there had been no alternative. The angel had needed divine magick for the repair. Lucifer was the perfect poisoned chalice; struck by Michael's halo, and diseased with the Primordial Flame.

Jacquetta moved them down the corridor, throwing many harried glances over her shoulder. Lucifer suspected she wished to tell them to hurry the blazes up, but would never dare.

His stomach churned, and if not for the cane, he doubted he'd be on his feet, but he could hardly have draped Seraphiel across his knees and wheeled about in that confounded chair. The cane had been a hurried and fortuitous find in Seraphiel's bedchamber. One very unlike the angel to own. But then, the Seraph had not been himself for a long time.

‘This one. It is closer than his chambers, and he favours this room. There is no bed, but a settee to lie his grace upon.'

Lucifer glared at her back, but chose not to admonish her for suggesting Lord Enoch's Highest Angel should be settled on a mere settee.

Lucifer dragged the still-protesting angel into the room.

A library. Bookshelves covered all the walls, save for the one where a well-set fire crackled in the hearth of a dark wood mantle. Books everywhere he looked, floor to high ceiling. Lucifer relaxed in his struggle with the angel, staring open-mouthed. Jacquetta moved in to take the weight of Seraphiel from him.

Lucifer drank the room in; embellished spines, thick tomes with glorious calligraphy naming them, a gilded ladder on wheels to move about and reach the top of those impossibly tall shelves, overstuffed armchairs one could sink into for days.

‘This is my library.' He drew his gaze from the familiar setting to find Seraphiel wincing as he sat. ‘You built a replica here?'

Another tremor struck, and the closed shutters banged against their clasps. Shutters covered both of the two windows, just as Lucifer enjoyed in an identical library in his Siltron Ranges' tower: a place he'd designed so as to hide from the trials and tribulations of Arcadia, and lose himself in other worlds.

‘It's not quite right, those decanters need work. Yours are finer, if I recall.' Seraphiel flipped his hand toward the side-table, with its assortment of glass, and scowled at Jacquetta as she lifted his legs to drape them on the settee: deep blue damask against Cherrywood. Lucifer had been torn between blue and red at the time he'd created his library, so he'd simply made another settee and used them both. ‘I thought of bringing you here one day. I thought perhaps it would please you.' Seraphiel shook his head, his golden strands falling over one shoulder. ‘But that day never came. Stop bothering me, fae.'

His snappish tone had Jacquetta stepping away, her jaw tight, but her decorum unruffled. ‘Of course, your grace.'

‘It pleases me.' Lucifer cleared his throat. ‘Very much.'

‘What does?' Seraphiel gave him a narrowed stare. ‘What are you on about?'

Lucifer sank down onto one of the armchairs, tired beyond words. ‘This library. You said you made it for me…and it is beautiful.'

‘Hardly matters now.' Seraphiel lifted his mirror. ‘This bastard seeks to ruin it all.' He frowned into the black glass.

‘This instability, the tremors, they are Michael's work?' Lucifer asked, knowing the answer well, but hoping to bring the angel's thoughts onto an evener keel.

Seraphiel grunted, focused on his obsidian.

‘They are, your majesty.' Jacquetta nodded. ‘The Ferryman resists him for now, and refuses to dock,' she glanced at Seraphiel. ‘But the Sanctuary's magick suffers with Lord Michael's assault.'

‘Can you not add fortification? I could assist, perhaps?' Lucifer had his flames, though how long before they too dwindled, he could not guess.

Seraphiel sniffed. ‘What could you do? You're mostly dead, Luci.'

The Child looked appalled, but Lucifer gave her a small shake of the head. ‘What else might be done?' He spoke calmly, but his fingers dug into the yellow-gold head of the cane.

‘Your offer is gracious, your majesty, but…' Again, the fae glanced at the angel. ‘This shall take great magick, to withstand him much longer.'

‘Unless that's what you want, Luci?' Seraphiel lifted his head, a sharp motion, his white eyes narrowed. ‘Perhaps you wish to see this Sanctuary fall.'

Lucifer sighed inwardly.

‘Whatever do you mean?' He braced for the fresh wave of madness he knew would come. ‘Why would I wish that?'

‘Enoch has sent you, hasn't he? He always held you in high esteem. You had his favour, much as I.' His eyes brightened. He nodded at his own faulty reasoning. ‘Do you work for the lord, and seek to kill me, again? Have you betrayed me, Hadrian?'

The angel grew stiff with his frenzy, dropping the mirror in his lap and pressing himself upright, arms rigid.

‘Settle down, you fool. I am no traitor to you, and you know it, Raph.' Lucifer scowled, but his pulses beat fast. Seraphiel did not know he'd taken Wrath to the cockaigne, but he feared what insanity it would stoke, should the unstable Seraph find out. ‘I saw that the prince was delivered to you, at a cost I cannot pay. You know me dying. You have seen what Michael's halo did to me when I fought him –'

‘Trickery. Illusion. You were in the Erlking's court. Perhaps he too aids you in my downfall.'

‘What utter rot. Listen to yourself.'

Seraphiel's hair swayed as he shook his head. ‘Don't try to disillusion me.'

‘You are doing a fine job of that on your own.'

The angel stabbed a finger towards Lucifer. ‘Your vestige! You claim Michael tore it from you, but who is to say you did not hand it over? And that enables his vice grip upon the Ferryman.'

Anger pushed aside Lucifer's pains. ‘Careful. You go too far, Raph.' His fingers danced with feeble flame, but there was guilt there. The idea he'd handed his vestige over was preposterous, of course. Michael had stolen it, in an act of cruelty, along with the piece of Lucifer's daemonstone. But those thefts had certainly led the Seraph to the prince at the cave.

Lucifer's inability to fend off Michael, was the very reason the Sanctuary now groaned in its joints.

‘Do I really go too far, though?' Seraphiel grunted as he shifted, setting his feet back on the floor, though looking in danger of toppling over at any moment. Jacquetta hovered nearby, at the ready. ‘What of the flame? The Primordial Flame that eats at you…you sought to steal it from me…' His eyes widened, his hands white-knuckled where they clutched at the settee, as he danced onto another wild theory. ‘ You damaged the simurgh, not the Archangel, nor that infantile Iblis. You are working with that Nephilim, aren't you, Lucifer?' Spittle flew from his mouth, the veins in his neck bulging. ‘You both seek to stop me. I will kill you, Lucifer.' He pushed to his feet, the radiant light from his eyes near blinding. The mirror landed on the rug with a thump. ‘I will kill you here and now.'

Lucifer lunged, grabbing at Seraphiel's shoulders. He shook him fiercely. ‘Stop this, do you hear me? How many times must I tell you? I am no enemy. I never have been, nor ever will be.'

The angel's eyes dimmed. Seraphiel did not fight back, moaning softly. The sound brought Lucifer to a sudden halt, his breath ragged. His body trembling.

‘Gods, Raph…I didn't mean to –'

‘Forgive me,' Seraphiel whispered.

‘There is nothing to forgive. I know your true mind.'

‘But I fear it grows more and more foreign to me.' He pressed his forehead against Lucifer's chest. ‘Luci, it is not your death needed here. It is mine. Once and for all.'

Lucifer felt the rare brush of a chill. ‘Don't speak that way.'

‘Why not? It is the truth. I thought I had outwitted the waters, their poisoning of me, but the lord was right. It cannot be done. Even this part of me I hoped to keep pure is succumbing again.'

‘Not yet, it isn't. Now sit down,' he said sternly, to cover any fear that escaped him. ‘Catch your breath and let us think this through.' Lucifer assisted the angel as he sat back down, far gentler with him now. ‘Vassago has gone through the Seal. Has the lady found him? Can we know?'

The palace shook upon its foundations, the room rattled, and somewhere behind them a book fell from its shelf. This time, the far distant roll of thunder accompanied the shaking.

Jacquetta handed Seraphiel the mirror. Her hand trembled. ‘Your Grace, will the mirror show you?'

Seraphiel shook his head, his shoulders slumped. Lucifer bit his lip, glancing away. His was not the only life ebbing away. He hoped his end would arrive before he was forced to watch Seraphiel slip from him a second time.

‘The mirror cannot scry into the lake.' The angel lay his hand over the glass, nearly covering the small, rounded piece entirely. ‘But the lady can reach me in her own way.'

He closed his eyes, dulling the room, and whispered a few words. He went still. Jacquetta wrung her hands, glancing at the clock on the mantle. It had been barely twenty minutes since Vassago had disappeared from the ballroom; whilst he stood beneath the chandelier of bone lillies and blue flame, begging for the ankou to be protected. Lucifer had never heard the prince beg for a thing in his four hundred years.

‘Your Grace,' Jacquetta whispered. ‘You are bleeding.'

Lucifer had seen it already. A thin trail of black ran from the corner of Seraphiel's mouth. Lucifer wiped it away with his thumb and received a ready slap.

‘Never mind that.' Seraphiel said, flashing teeth stained pale black. ‘I told you I had little time to survive in this body.' He paused. Lucifer found himself studied. ‘Vassago has taken his first step into the lake.'

Lucifer blew out a breath, a great weight lifting from his chest. ‘He has?'

‘Of course he has,' Seraphiel wiped at the corner of his mouth, with a hint of a bittersweet smile. ‘He was sired by the greatest King of Daemonkind Arcadia has known.'

Lucifer stared at him. What did one say to such gross exaggeration? ‘Well, I hardly think –'

Whatever he thought didn't matter. Another tremor struck the Sanctuary. A violent rocking of the foundations, one that sent books tumbling from the highest rows, and sending the decanters Seraphiel had been so dissatisfied with shattering against the woodwork. Jacquetta swore, the curses befitting a fishwife, as she grabbed hold of the settee.

‘Your Grace, if that angel brings down the Sanctuary, the Seal goes with it.' She was brusque, forgoing all flattery. ‘And I have nothing left to give to reinforce this place. These walls will not hold if he continues.'

Lucifer frowned. ‘What do you mean the Seal goes with it?'

‘Never mind all that.' Seraphiel said, glaring down at the mirror. ‘The Sanctuary will not fall.'

Jacquetta huffed in frustration, her seemingly endless patience with the delicate Seraph clearly at an end. ‘Begging your pardon, but you are wrong. I have built you a formidable stronghold, and followed your orders to feed the Cultivation and fortify the Seal, but that has compromised my structure, and now we have lost this Sanctuary's greatest weapon which was concealment.' She drew in a hurried breath, continuing. ‘They could not destroy what they could not find. But now Michael knows he is on the right path.' She looked to Lucifer, her anxiety hardening her features. ‘Has he told you that the Seraph rides in the Ferryman's boat?' She gave him no chance to answer. ‘That boat and its guide are a buttress that strengthen the Sanctuary, and Michael knows it. He seeks to break the Ferryman's will, as he would break a lock, and peel away a layer of protection from my build. These tremors mark his attempts, and they grow stronger each time.'

‘And the Seal?' Lucifer adopted his poise of command, his face empty of expression, his demeanour equally so; as he'd done a thousand times before on the Hellfield.

Jacquetta eyed Seraphiel, hesitating. The angel stared down into his mirror; Michael and the Ferryman were visible now in the glass.

To look at them there seemed nothing untoward. The boatman stood in their suit of armour at the bow, whilst Michael, in his human guise, sat in the middle; that great bruiser of a man who had made the people in the tea-house in Slaidburn tremble, a rival to the ankou in his solidness and breadth, the sort of fellow best avoided in a dark alley.

Michael wished to frighten. Well, he had the King of Daemonkind fearful now.

‘Tell me how this affects the Seal. Now,' Lucifer demanded.

Seraphiel spoke, his eyes casting a glow against the obsidian. ‘Simple really. I knew my death might have dire consequences for my Seal, and that if Michael or Ariel took it over, there was no chance I could return. No chance the vessel would ever be allowed through. So I created a Cultivation that would, in the event of my demise, anchor the Seal to the Sanctuary, and feed from it, to maintain its strength. They would have no reason to claim it, for it would hold.'

‘And this Cultivation has something to do with the ballroom? Where Samyaza's bones lie?' Lucifer tried to overlook how certain Seraphiel had been in his death.

‘The bones are the lynchpin, yes.'

‘So the dancers...they are a part of the Cultivation, too?'

The angel watched Michael, who sat like a statue of stone in the boat. His gaze was such that it seemed he looked straight at the mirror.

‘What greater thing to counter death than life?' Seraphiel spoke like a poet over his cups, a whimsical note to his words.

But Lucifer understood the darkness that truly lay there. ‘The purebreds…they are what feed the Seal in your absence.'

‘They keep insisting on dying though…' Seraphiel's laughter was short. ‘I cannot seem to make life bend to my will. She refuses to offer the eternity that her sister Death provides.' He poked his finger at Michael's head, twisting it, as though he sought to grind the image of the angel from the glass.

Lucifer turned to Jacquetta as thunder strode like giants' footsteps across the sky. ‘Do you have more? Purebreds, I mean?' Perhaps Seraphiel had thought to stock up a dungeon before he went and got himself killed.

‘No.' Jacquetta answered as Seraphiel sang a vicious song of hatred beneath his breath, counting all the ways Michael was flawed. ‘I have used all those we had, as I didn't dare to send the Ferryman to collect more, knowing of the great unrest in the Blight, and of maleficium's return.'

Lucifer felt the weight of his own blood in his veins, the snapped beat of his burdened heart. ‘So those who dance there now are the last, and when they are no longer there to sustain the Seal, it shall turn to the Sanctuary to feed.'

‘Yes, your majesty. And if Michael keeps up his assault, the Sanctuary will fall –'

‘And Blood Lake may flood this world once more.' Seraphiel did not raise his head from the mirror, letting gold strands hide him away.

‘Then we must feed the bloody Sanctuary.' Lucifer paced away, his fingers going instinctively to his moustache. Or at least, where it had once been; with half scorched away by the interlude with Michael he'd decided on being clean shaven. Not his preference, for he found the endless running of fingers over oil-slicked hair strangely soothing, and was pleased to feel the hint of coarse hair growing back already. He needed some refuge from this nightmare he'd landed in.

‘Could you reason with Michael?' Jacquetta offered, though she sounded doubtful.

‘He has always been one to exterminate a threat before he learns anything of it. And he is set on destroying Vassago,' Lucifer said. ‘Plus, he knows of the simurgh.'

‘He will be determined to see this Sanctuary razed.' Seraphiel paused in his derogatory tune, returning to sensibility. ‘And he does not know my Seal is here. I've always kept its location hidden, and moved it on occasion, as all my brothers have done with theirs. Michael would come in, halo blazing, and not pay us a whit of attention. By the time we could convince him my Seal was here –'

‘It would be too late.' Lucifer nodded, his fingers still working over his bare lip.

‘Time.' Seraphiel rose to his feet, warding off Jacquetta's step forward to help. ‘Time is the only weapon we have against him now. Vassago needs time. He will see this done. Look how far he has come.' He shifted his hair back behind his shoulders, and Lucifer saw the steadiness in his hands. His Antinous had returned, however short the visit. ‘Knowing how long he has endured my Cultivation, even I am taken aback by his tenacity. Perhaps you were right to make that vow, to keep the ankou and those purebreds safe, Luci. Vassago deserves that much.'

Lucifer's fingers ceased their tracing. The thudding blow that struck the Sanctuary might as well have landed against his chest.

He had vowed to see them safe; Silas and Charlie, Edward, and the wisp.

But the stakes had grown exponentially higher than that odd gaggle; if the Seal were to break, it was not just those within the Sanctuary, but every single creature who had aided Vassago in reaching this place, who now lay in harm's way. Worse still, every writer of Lucifer's beloved tomes, every storyteller who had built wondrous tales in which he could escape–all those who still lived–now faced a monumental threat.

Lucifer's fingers moved again; and ran along the scratch of coarse hair forming above his lip. He was not gone yet. There was life in his weary bones.

‘My blood. Can you take more of it? Perhaps give it to the purebreds who still dance?'

‘That was enough for the simurgh, but not for the Seal.' Seraphiel shook his head.

An idea sparked in the grim depths of Lucifer's innards, and bloomed bright; defying the poisons that broke him down. ‘You need more.'

‘Far more, yes.' Seraphiel said, carefully. He moved closer, head tilted. ‘Share your thoughts, Luci.'

But Lucifer had shared enough years with the angel, spent enough time in quiet contemplation with him to know he already understood.

‘We are enough, aren't we, Raph?' The idea was like ivy now, wrapping itself around him, beautiful, and suffocating. ‘We could revive the dance.'

Jacquetta drew in a breath, but knew better than to intervene.

‘We could.' The angel pressed his hand to Lucifer's shoulder. A rare moment of contact between them. ‘Are you sure, Luci?'

The tremor shook one shutter free of its clasp, swinging it open; flooding the room with light. Lucifer waited, barely feeling the rumble at his feet, for he was unshakeable now. ‘Vassago needs time, and you and I have used all but the last minute the gods have granted us. I am sure, Raph.'