Page 54 of The Death Wish
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 pressurehe 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.’