“Oh gods, he wants you to bring her back?”Bastien breathes.
“Yeah, he says she’s powerful beyond comprehension.That if I return her to him, he will give me my soul back.And at the time… I was so pissed.I mean, I am pissed with her.I’m fucking furious.But it’s also Ignatius, and if I do that to her, after what she sacrificed to get away from him…”
“Son of a whore,” Lex says.
“What a cunt,” Bastien adds.
This time, Lex puts her head in her hands.“You can’t bring her back.You reaped her, she doesn’t have a soul…”
“Then how the hell are we getting her back?”Bastien says.
I sag into the sofa.“I have absolutely no idea.”
12
Lucy
My screams echo around the demonic library as Interitus sinks her claws into my calf and drags me away from the wall.There’s no way I’m dead, not when I’m in this much pain.She wrenches her fingers out of my calf.Blood pools under me.
There’s a flash of fluff and white in the corner of my eye.Mortem leaps at the nearest bookcase, but he doesn’t weigh enough to push it over.He must realise the problem because he hops up onto the table and backs up.
I could laugh, his plump belly waddling in reverse.I’m so screwed.There’s no way he’s going to be able to?—
For one brief moment, the pain abates as my jaw sags, my entire focus on the ball of fluff charging at the bookcase at a speed that should be illegal for a catthatfull of tuna.
He lurches off the end of the table, leaping with all the might he can muster and careens into the bookcase.It groans, wobbles and then tips.
I snap my attention back to Interitus, who frowns and turns a moment too late.
The case topples and she crashes to the ground under the weight of hundreds of old leather tomes.
Mortem hops on top of the pile and licks his paw.“You better adopt a pretty pussy when we get back to Ora.”
“Do you want to be any shallower?”
“Do you want to be any more ungrateful?I just saved your life.I generously accept your offer of adopting a pretty lady.Now.Move…”
We need to leave but my leg is in agony.A searing heat shoots from the puncture wounds.
“I need to wrap my leg,” I say and shred the end of my robe as fast as I can to create a makeshift bandage.I hobble out of the way of all the fallen tomes as a moan spills out from under the pile.
“Go,” Mortem meows.
I do, hobbling as quickly as the pain will allow.As we leave the library, I shove a table against the door.Not that it will stop her for long, but I’ll take any advantage I can get.
There’s a shriek in the distance.
“Wraiths,” Mortem says.
I don’t wait for instructions, I start shuffling forward.The minute we round the corner into the next corridor, the source of the shrieking is apparent.The noise of the books falling must have alerted every damn creature in the underworld.
A swarm of wraiths hovers at the end of the corridor.Our movement alerts them, and their spindle-like necrotic limbs skitter and scurry towards me.
I back up, one step two, pain lancing through my calf with every movement.I’ll take the pain all night as long as I keep moving away from those things.
I dart down another corridor in the opposite direction, an idea forming.We keep sprinting, Mortem huffing angry little puffs of breath through his nostrils, his butt wiggling up and down, tail erect.
We skid into the main spiral staircase again and my heart plummets.This is where we were when Interitus found us last time.
