Hellfire

Chapter Fifty-Three

Four days passed and I wasn't allowed to leave that hotel room once, not while witches were pouring into the city to cut up and box up the parasites, to scour the Belly and ensure there were no more Beaumonts or Emerys left to continue the work. Worse, one of the Inquisitors of the Courts came down on Eva's behalf to speak with the witches and drag Beaumont back to the Cauldron; a powerful vampire that we really didn't want near me. And then there was Morrigan, dreaming away in the house and stalking the shadows. Until Lucius had coaxed her back into a deeper sleep, I wasn't allowed near. So, I was kept where I was in the hotel, not allowed to even step out of the door, something I did willingly even if it was a struggle.

Lucius came and went, being summoned by Tabitha for the handover of Beaumont or he went to go ensure evidence of us left behind in the Belly was truly ruined. While he was gone, I'd sit in his chair, inhaling the scent he'd left behind and staring at the picture Little One had drawn of the massacre Lucius had been the only survivor of. I kept replaying what Lucius said over and over again. I kept recalling the pain he inflicted on himself, knowing I'd seen only the thinnest amount. She had broken him repeatedly whenever she woke. She tore at him, boiled his blood, splintered his bones, all to force him to do what she wanted and become archon. And she had made him kill his brother, all to keep her bloodline pure and punish Gabriel for loving a mortal.

The more I thought, the more I felt this impatience in me bottling up. It made me pace endlessly until I went mad, desperate to be doing something but unable to do shit. Even if I could leave, I couldn't waltz up to her room and burn it down. Until I freed Lucius and the Vortigerns from her blood commands, they'd defend her to the death.

Lucius would return to me and always find me fuming, curled in a ball as I practiced my breathing to calm myself and breathing out hot ash. He'd coax me free from this whirlpool of frustration with his cold and touch, and would make me forget about as he'd push me into the shower, letting the cold drown me and his mouth and touch caress me, encouraging me to lean against his chest to feel the life in him and assure he was safe. It would distract me for a time. His taste would drown me, my teeth in him making him breathless, his body leaving me bereft whenever he wasn't in contact with me; filling me, touching me. Every time I woke at dusk I'd find myself nestled into the crook of his arm with his fingers trailing over my skin or he was in his chair, eyes closed as he drifted along the bats clustered about the city. It made this warmth glow in me, pushing away the little whispers this wasn't real.

It was.

It was real.

Which in turn made the threats real. Morrigan hurting Alistair and Ella for loving one another, for doing worse to Lucius and myself, was very fucking real. Lucius assured me we had years, decades even, but I wasn't so sure.

And then I'd be in that endlessly, infuriating loop again, thinking about what I needed to do, how I'd defend the family, thinking of the hurt Lucius had gone through; lost to my determination to never suffer the loss ten-year-old me had and the determination to never let Lucius repeat his pain either.

But on the fifth day, I finally felt a little reassurance we were going to be fine when it wasn't Lucius who came to me.

I recognised the gentle knock at the door; polite and soft and trying not to startle me into an explosion. I scrabbled from the door and yanked it open, my heart lighting to see Arnold standing there, dressed in tweed and his watery gaze peering at me curiously behind half-moon glasses.

'Good evening, Susan. Glad to see you are indeed well, as Lucius claimed.'

I resisted the urge to just hug him, the first person I'd seen since Beaumont's attack, and stepped back and gestured for him to enter. He swept by and I didn't fail to notice his attention sweeping over the place. There wasn't much to it. A pile of fruit on the table beside the alcohol Lucius treated me to, my clothes tidied on a chair, but only because Lucius would organise them, and a pile of books I tried to focus on instead of the hurricane of thoughts in my head. Some of them were burnt now.