Reapers -- The First Familiar (Reapers Chronicles Book II)

30 - The Devil's Secret (2 of 2)

I was so absorbed in my thoughts I didn’t realize we had reached Sathariel’s study room.

Sathariel went straight to the fireplace. He pulled down the wing of one of the bronze angel sculptures and the wall behind the grille slid aside with the noise of stone grinding against metal. He motioned me to follow before ducking into the opening.

It was the devil’s lair. And I was going in without a fight.

The passageway was dark and narrow. I could feel both walls just stretching my arms.

The shuffling of Sathariel’s feet and the rustle of cloth was the only indication that he was walking in front of me.

“Halt,” whispered he, glancing back at me.

Sathariel’s eyes burned red, with vertical slits for pupils. Right as he blinked, fire sputtered from the torches bolstered along the walls.

Fire, I thought. The Devil controls fire.

Urgently, we took the winding stairs down. The underground air invited claustrophobia and many other creepy creatures that slithered in between the stones that made up the walls.

By the time we reached the room at the end of the stairs, I was choking on spider webs and dust. But what had me winded more was the life-size portrait of Roselle Sinclair. Alone in the middle of the wall, it looked like the main attraction of the grandiosely ancient room. More like a mural, really.

Sitting on a bed of roses right below the painting was a small glass lamp. It had a lid on to keep the few fireflies inside.

“Is that…” I got on my knee to look closer at the lamp. “No way.”

“Roselle’s remains,” Sathariel answered quietly. “What I had salvaged of it.”

I faced the devil with a question I could not put into words.

“What do you know about your master’s mother, child?” Sathariel tested.

“Only that she died because of Pilgrim Reaper.”

He went behind the large table in the middle of the room. With a knife, he made a small cut in his palm and let the blood drip on the goblet sitting at the leftmost corner. The goblet glowed for a second, followed by the sounds of bolts unlocking. One of the drawers slid out on its own. Inside was the Helcium, its brilliance not failing to make me breathless.

There was a wistful look about Sathariel’s eyes when he picked up the necklace. “I’m afraid what you’ve learned is… inaccurate.”

“I thought she was killed because of a law,” I mumbled, my thought process picking up pace. “The one that’s passed after Pilgrim’s women tried to get rid of him. That’s why Vincent hates him.”

Painfully, he shook his head. “Vincent despises Azrael because of his blood.”

“What do you mean?”

Enclosing the Helcium in his hands, he looked up at Roselle’s portrait. “Vincent—unlike his brothers—is born with special… gifts. At an early age, he learned to control and suppress this overwhelming power inside him. But he began to lose control after the death of his dearest friend.”

“Adrianna.”

I remembered the memories Alessandra showed me. The red scales all over Vincent’s body. The crimson reptilian eyes. The destructive power he unleashed that night. Were those his gifts?

“Roselle persuaded Vincent to accept immortality, threw herself to Azrael’s feet only to ask for her son’s place among the Reapers.” He touched the portrait longingly. “Roselle so believed that the Reapers’ Binds shall help Vincent restrain the tremendous power in him. How wrong was she.