Prelude (Underworld Lucian Fanfiction)

39 - Chapter XXXIX: Speak of the Devil

Twenty minutes later.

Oh God.

Lucian cracked open one of his eyelids. Light. Everywhere. His head swimming on the tiled floor, as the sun pierced his exterior. He was lying in the same position as the night before, the centre of his bathroom, his head directly beneath the roof lantern...except now, there were hot flecks of water stinging his face, and above him...a towering figure, its face too bright to look upon.

It occurred to him that he might be dead. Perhaps he had succeeded last night and this was hell. The devil taking the shape of a figure of light. The damned souls rising through the air, turning his dried vomit into a sea of undiscovered smells. Oh yes, this was what hell smelled like: blood-wine. Laudanum. Roses. A bit of duck...and something sticky. Except stickiness was not a smell. Neither should it have been rising out of his stomach.

Fair warning.

He tried to take hold of a chair leg and instead, hit glass...the sound of a bottle crashing to the ground, the stench growing a touch more foul as he wiped the tiles with orange preserve. It smelled like the majority had landed on his shirt, though to be fair, his eyes were closed, so for all he knew, some of it had landed on Allegra as well...in which case, it was a rousing success.

For he knew it was Allegra. He could smell her. He could always smell her. And now he got to hear her voice in his ear...Aleksey, she said...The words only just making it through the cracks. Aleksey...come now, wake up. Her perfume in his face. Roses. She was lightly tapping him across the cheek. But he'd be damned if he was going to let her wake him. Not when he was having such a good time on the floor. His stomach a bit emptier, his hair a bit wetter, his mind drifting. If the vomit was to be trusted, then he was most definitely alive...so what the devil had happened last night? Did someone stop him? Did he give up? Surely by now, he'd have the balls to kill himself...

The voice became louder.

That voice. He inhaled. How to describe it? In the one token, reserved for a special kind of hell, and in the other, deceptively charming, the sweetest German, a sound made of milk and honey, laughter and love, and beneath that, the hapless cries of drowning men. Not enough that he wanted to die, but it would seem she intended to witness the fact. Her heels clicking on the tiles, moving his chair, picking up syringes, a discarded shirt, boots, a bottle or two...

Against his better judgment, he opened his eyes.

"We have been trying to wake you for a quarter of an hour," she said. The sentence was plain. Its speaker...not so much. He blinked, trying to focus through the light. Red lips, flawless skin, the occasional flash of teeth providing ample distraction for the eyes. If he were to take his inspection further, he might say their length was gauged by how much guilt she wished upon him...

"Were you intending to use this?" She pointed at the noose casually hanging above them.

Yes...

...and to answer her next question... no, he was not feeling guilty about it either. Yes, he simply wanted to die. Was that such a problem for everyone? Almost snorting with the effort, he turned over. And what did it matter if it was a quarter of an hour or a century? He still wanted to kill himself...so as far as that noose was concerned, any passage of time was just an expression of wasted opportunities.

"Oh for goodness's sake, Lyosha, stop being so difficult..." With her skirts in hand, Allegra made a tutting sound and stepped onto the chair. "...it would not have worked anyway. You know Raze always tampers with the latch." She began picking at the noose with a sharp nail, and to no one's surprise, it was the latch rather than the knot that came loose.