Page 19

They discussed what had been happening since the incident at the cemetery while they walked. Izzy paused in the doorway when they reached the war room. It was packed with angels and Dark Warriors. Donovan went right in.

There was a wall of monitors, and a table large enough to host a hostage negotiation, which made sense. There were many factions in the city to deal with this crisis. Izzy crossed to the corkboard she had stolen. Donovan joined her when she cleared a card table and pinned a paper map of the Quarter to it. She thought better with string and pins than screens.

“Walk me through it again,” Izzy ordered as she gestured to the tablet in Donovan’s hands. She dropped into a chair and spun a red pin between two fingers. “Give me confirmed sightings only. Start with Lucifer.”

Donovan lowered himself into the chair across from her as if his bones had filed for divorce. Holding up the tablet with one hand, he put one finger near the river. “This was him. It wasn’t the skirm, or the tarhounds. It also wasn’t some demon with a flair for public nuisance,” Donovan explained as he traced a slow path from tomb to church to alley. “People keep calling his movements random because it seems that way. I don’t believe that for a second. The devil has a pattern. It is a circle, and every night he’s pulling it tighter.”

“Turning it into a noose?” Izzy leaned in and stared at the pins. The loop had a center that sat beneath the oldest part of the Quarter, where the river used to run before humans decided moving water was something they could do without consequences. “He’s pacing,” she muttered, answering her own question.

She tapped the center of the loop. “Like he’s caught on a chain.”

“That’s the part that is pissing me off,” Donovan told her as he tapped the same spot twice. “You chain a dog, and it’ll walk until it can’t go anymore. He’s not hunting out there. He’s measuring his leash.”

“Lucifer wouldn’t wear a collar so he could be leashed willingly. Not after his long imprisonment in Cocytus,” Izzy rebuked, though her skin had gone tight before she finished the sentence. She knew what a chain felt like. “That begs the question, what the hell is holding him?”

“You tell me.” Donovan's gaze stayed on her. “You’re the one who survived having him in your head.”

Izzy threw the red pin at him. Donovan caught it without flinching, which was the most alive he had looked all day. Wonderful. Apparently, the way to improve his color was attempted murder with office supplies.

“That’s hardly what happened,” Izzy countered as she stood. Sitting still made her thoughts feel like they were chewing through her skin. “Everybody keeps saying he clawed out of that ice after Rami escaped with me.”

“Keep going,” Donovan urged as his fingers closed around the pin. “Are you saying through you, he found the rotten floorboard?”

“What if he didn’t get all the way out?” Izzy paced to the board and pressed her palm over the center of the loop. “What if he tore himself loose, but the ice still has a part of him? And every time he moves topside, it drags. It makes sense. It would explain why he’s still here, and that is why he keeps circling back to the tear.”

“And the Old Ones are using that chain as a conduit to feed through,” Donovan added. His face was sharp and tired at the same time. He leaned back too fast, winced, and looked personally offended that his body was lodging an opinion without permission.

The floor seemed to tilt under Izzy’s boots, which was rude because she had not scheduled a breakdown. She grabbed the edge of the table and stared at the map as if it had just insulted her mother. “He woke them because he thought they were tools,” she continued as the pieces snapped together in the ugliest possible order. “Keys, muscle, whatever nightmare bullshit a fallen archangel tells himself he needs. When in reality, he’s making the dumbest decision in three realms. But they’re not going to bend to his will. They’re hungry.”

Donovan’s jaw tightened. “He cracked their prison at the same time he clawed free of the ice. The fault is feeding both ways.”

“He lit the fire, and now he can’t get off the coals,” Izzy added as she lifted her palm off the map. “He’s literally running out of himself.”

“That is why he’s gassed,” Donovan concluded as his eyes lifted to hers. “He hasn’t recovered from escaping the Underworld, and he’s still clawing his way out.”

Izzy’s father, Zander, ducked through the frame and headed right for them. “Hey, lass. What’s this look for?” He took in the map, the pins, and our faces.

Izzy walked into her father’s arms. “We think we worked something out about Lucifer’s actions, and why.” Izzy and Donovan were succinct as they laid the information out to the vampire king.

“Och. He’s desperate,” Zander rumbled as his sapphire gaze came to her. “A desperate person does stupid, ugly things to survive. And all this is connected to Lucifer, lass?”

“Those are the movements of our chained devil,” Izzy replied as she straightened. Her father was the vampire king and leader of the Dark Warriors because her father had never once thanked anyone for softening a blade. “We were about to message you.”

“You were about to message me,” Elsie, Izzy’s mother, corrected as she came into the war room. They told Elsie and the other warriors who had wandered over their theory on Lucifer.

When they were done, Elsie’s eyes moved over Izzy first, then Donovan. “That’s a significant discovery. And very important. But you have both been up for two days, sweetheart. Donovan looks like the underside of a boot someone wore through demon sludge. You both need food and rest.” Elsie’s mom-mode was pure steel.

“We need to figure this out,” Donovan countered. “Something big is going to happen. As the chain gets tighter, Lucifer will become more unpredictable.”

“You can add more, but doona think you’re going back oot before getting some food and proper rest.” Zander pulled out a chair, turned it around, and sat with his forearms crossed over the back, which somehow made him look less like a king and more like a tired warrior, ready for the war to be done. “The good news is he is beatable now in a way he will no’ be in a month. The bad news is a cornered devil bleeding into a Titan doesna need full strength to win. He just needs a way to plug the hole.”

“Our Scribe can do that,” Izzy blurted. “It’s why he’s been trying to get her.”

Elsie's gaze swiveled to her daughter. “You're talking about Sarah. Dammit. I was hoping for one peaceful second before the next disaster kicks us in the teeth.”

“I would love to lie and give you that peace, Mom, but this family has a terrible relationship with reality already,” Izzy replied as she dragged a hand through her hair. “Sarah didn’t only get stronger. She became the one thing that could close that fault. She’s gone from being the prize to being the whole board.”

Zander’s expression went lethal in a way that made smarter people leave the room. “She can also open it so it keeps its hold on Lucifer. And cage the Old Ones for good. We don’t want his engine to stop bleeding.”