Chapter 258-5

Soon you will be free from this." He rubbed the pads of his thumbs over my hands, where the black veins ran strong under my skin. "Where is Lucifer?" I asked. "Oh he is not gone but he will not come here, not yet. Right now, he will be licking his wounds no doubt. Hiding in one of the realms where only he can go, biding his time, until he thinks it's safe to return. And when he does we will play these games of his over and over again. That's just the way of things. He always returns." A shuffling, scraping noise whispered through the annex and Harper cursed, jumping to his feet as he stared widely at the entrance where the black gates hung twisted and broken. Grey faces stared out of the darkness there, crammed into every space, moving like one mass, an unstoppable tide all with eyes full of yearning and I knew they stretched back through the whole Gallery and beyond; an endless sea of the dead. I saw their pain, each face a canvas depicting their own suffering, their own prison where