Hellfire

Chapter Sixty-Five

I was screaming, curled in a ball and on fire. Everything hurt. Everything. I was splitting apart, my body and my heart. My bones were crumbling to ash, my soul swallowed by such rage and pain as I kept replaying that moment Morrigan had hunted me – the death that had rushed from her.

Arnold was dead. He was dead.

I roared out again, tears little more than embers rushing from my eyes. The pain in me was too much. It was all too much. I couldn't control it.

But then a small hand tapped my shoulder lightly and I looked up, finding myself staring at Little One. Despite the heat spilling around me, she stood close. Frost glistened over her as Lucius protected her from me. She smiled encouragingly.

'We've got to help daddy.'

Abruptly, the darkness and the hellfire vanished and I found myself in my seat in Lucius' office, surrounded by his cold and scent. It grounded me, rushing in cooling frost into my lungs rather than boiling ash. I breathed out slowly, settling my heart and temper enough that I could take control of it, but not finding it quite right. It was shattered, shifting and bubbling beneath my control.

Little One took my hand gently. 'Daddy needs us. Grandmummy is remembering. He can't stop it.'

'I can't do shit. I'm exploding right now, Little One.' I snapped hotly, my temper rippling out of my grasp for just a moment.

I breathed in another cooling breath, closing my eyes, as I remember that book, not Arnold's dying face. That book had something in it. It had to. I had snatched it from the depths of Morrigan's soul after all.

Little One was already holding it out for me, gingerly keeping herself as far from as possible from the heat rushing from me. My attention latched onto it, and a growl thundered from it. I'd open that fucking thing.

I took it from her and she hurried away from the hellfire skittering along the floor as I hooked my fingers into the fleshy binding, eyeing the remaining blood threads, and yanked. I put everything into it, my heart, my fury, my terror for Arnold – I burned and burned, my sharpened teeth gritted and my body straining.

Until they just...snapped.

The book unfolded over my lap, unveiling sticky pages of emptiness. I stared at it, glaring irritably. I expected something to happen. I didn't know what exactly, some kind of revelation or memory to come forth, but nothing happened. Impatiently, I flicked each wet page, trying to find anything, but every page was blank and pale as bone.

Nothing was in here.

'Maybe it's in grandmummy's head.' Little One as she peered at the disgusting book as it slowly it began to melt, drooping into a shapeless mess. 'Uncle doesn't know anything, but she must.'

I stared at the melting book, watching how it changed into water and sunk into the carpet, and rose sharply, shaking my wet hands. Little One was right. This was Morrigan's book. Something must've changed in her dreamscape. I didn't know if going in there was smart, there was a shift in her and I was currently struggling not to blow up, but it was the only way forward I had. I was up like a shot, barrelling towards the door, my feet bouncing from the burst of energy in me.

'Stay put!' I ordered.

Little One nodded and waved just before I ducked through the door and tore through the tunnel. I had no time to take it in, no time to notice how the lights in the sky were beginning to blink out, how the lamps were starting to rust and twist, or how the demons swooped down to scoop up Lucius' bats, devouring them one by one. I just bolted. I had no time. My bomb was stirring in my chest, billowing out brimstone and fire. Lucius had no time. Our plan had failed.