Page 92 of The Death Wish

‘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.’