Chapter Text
When Loona opened her eyes, she saw nothing. She felt nothing. Heard nothing. There was no wind or sound. But there was a smell. It was sharp and clean, a sweet ozone with a lingering undercurrent of warm cloves.
She looked down. Her clawed feet dug into a white dust that drifted upward in a slow swirl around her ankles. She was standing on the edge of a precipice, nothing but inky void before her, so deep and black that her insides spun with vertigo.
Unnerved, she turned from it.
Behind her was more void hanging above the gray-white terrain, but this view contained a scatterplot of stars stretching across the blackness. In the distance--so impossibly far away--a handful of planets orbited a massive ball of writhing fire; a blue-white sun.
The vastness of it was terrifying. Fear twisted her stomach as she stared into the open nothing that surrounded her and it was only then that she realized that she couldn’t breathe.
Something called out from the deep. Not a voice, but an impression, a snapshot of splattered blood coating pristine walls.
The smell of ozone was overwhelming.
She spread her jaws to cry out, but the sound that erupted from her throat wasn’t hers. It was a somewhat familiar voice, but it was multiplied and expanded, as if a roomful of people were shrieking at once. The noise billowed and crescendoed in her skull and she brought up her hands to grip the sides of her head.
A rapid knock on the door woke her.
She sat up with a jolt, her hands still clutching fistfuls of her hair, unkempt cuticles catching strands. She blinked away the last of the nightmare, her chest heaving in panicked breaths through a dry throat.
“Time for work, sweetie!” Blitzo called cheerfully from beyond the closed door.
“I’m up,” she managed to choke out.
A fading purple glow from her nightstand caught the corner of her eye.
“Okie-dokie, Loony-Toony!”
She heard Blitzo move away from the door as she looked over at the Grimoire beside her bed. The faint glow had dissolved into nothing, but she was certain that she had seen it.
She really needed to stop studying it before bed. Her dreams were getting weirder. More vivid. This one had been more intense than she’d had before and the echoes of her visions bounced around in her skull as she dragged herself up and got dressed.
Loona honestly enjoyed trying to puzzle out the book, though her current obsession with it did serve a very specific purpose. There was so much in it that was simply beyond her comprehension for now, but she was working on it. She was discovering that she had a knack for magic that possibly went beyond most Hellhounds. Of course she could disguise herself with a human disguise when needed--most hounds could do at least that much--but she was learning that she was capable of much more.
For the past several months–really since right after Stolas left–she had been reading the book before bed. Some of it was written in English, but the vast majority appeared to be Latin, old Norse, and odd symbols. Most of the time she could figure out bits of the Latin and Norse, but the symbols and scrawlings remained a mystery. So far, she had found very few answers that would help in their search for the absent prince.
Still, it was interesting to flip through the book. Toward the back were what appeared to be medicinal recipes to cure ailments and brew potions. Part of her itched to try concocting some of them, but she had no idea where to even get most of the ingredients. Regardless, she enjoyed reading through them again and again.
Maybe someday.
“Loooooony!” Blitzo sang from the living room. “Come on, we’re gonna be late!”
Loona growled under her breath and ran a claw through her hair as she looked at herself in the mirror. Good enough. She wouldn’t bother putting on makeup today. Yesterday’s eyeliner was still holding up.
As she went to the door, the book began to glow again as if reminding her to take it with her. While she had calmed herself from the dream, she still felt a nagging sense of doom that crawled up the base of her spine when she looked down at the book. It was as if something was wrong, but she didn’t know what it was.
She picked it up. The binding was strangely warm against her fur and she hesitated a moment before tucking it under her arm.
The company van grated down the street toward M and M’s place with its usual toddering candor. The CHECK ENGINE light had flickered on at the end of last week, but Blitzo figured that pushing her through another week probably wouldn’t kill her. Hopefully. He knew that Moxxie was going to say something about it the second they picked him up, but Blitzo was in a rare good mood for a Monday and was not about to let that prick’s worries ruin it.
He looked over at Loona. Her face was buried in the Grimoire again, as it almost always was over the past few months. Her eyes above the pages looked exhausted.
“Didn’t sleep well?”
Loona was not great for conversation in the mornings--or, really, ever--but she didn’t look too good and he felt the need to ask.
“What? Oh.” She rubbed at one eye. She was wearing yesterday’s eyeliner, which she only did when she was either hungover or sick. He knew that she wasn’t hungover and she didn’t exactly look sick. Just tired. “No, I guess I didn’t. Weird dreams.”
“Again?”
She sighed, irritated. She knew what he was about to say, because he had already said it a thousand times in the past several weeks. He furrowed his brow and said it anyway.
“You need to take a break from the book, Loona.”
“It’s not a big deal.”
“It’s fucking with your brain!”
“I know!” she snapped. “You think I don’t fucking know that it’s messing with me? I’m just…” She rubbed her face again, then continued more quietly, “I’m trying to help Via.”
The constant, crushing sadness that Blitzo had been keeping at bay for nearly half a year tried to claw itself up his throat. His stomach clenched and he forced it down again. It hurt, but it hurt less than it did a few months ago.
“Via wouldn’t want you to put yourself through this. She thinks he’s dead, anyway.”
Blitzo felt Loona’s stare but pretended not to, instead keeping his eyes on the road as he pulled up to the curb outside M & M’s apartment.
“Do you think he’s dead?” she asked finally.
The latch on the back door clicked as Moxxie slid it open, saving Blitzo from answering.
“Good morning!” Mille greeted as she clambered into the back seat after her husband.
Blitzo grunted in response. His good mood was definitely gone now. Part of him wished that Moxxie really would comment on the check engine light, just so that he’d have an excuse to scream at somebody. He barely waited for Millie to close the door before he peeled away from the curb and sped toward the office.
“I think he’s alive,” Loona said after a few silent moments.
Blitzo glanced into the rearview mirror and could tell by the expressions on Moxxie’s and Millie’s faces that they could feel the tension between them. He switched lanes, cut off a truck, and went faster. “We’ll talk about it later.”
“But, if he’s alive I can’t just stop studying the book! If there’s a chance–”
“ Later , Loona.”
She huffed and opened the book again. Blitzo caught Moxxie and Millie share a concerned glance. Millie shrugged. The four of them kept the uneasy silence as they rode on.
They were only a few minutes from the office when Moxxie broke the silence with a tentative, “Uh, sir, did you know that your check engine light is–”
Blitzo took a deep breath, absolutely fucking ready to unload all of his rage onto his blissfully ignorant employee. But before he could even get a single word out, a purple-blue circle of light appeared in the road in front of him, a glowing ring orbiting a pitch black hole in reality.
He spat out a tight curse and yanked the wheel to avoid driving into it. The tires screeched as he swerved into the next lane, nearly side-swiping a sedan. Behind him in the back seat, he heard Millie cry out as she was thrown against her husband and Moxxie grunted as the side of his head cracked against the closed window.
The van tried to spin out but Blitz wouldn’t let it, arms burning as he wrestled with the vehicle to get it back under his control. As he steadied, he looked into the side-mirror to see behind them. Because that could not have been what he thought it was. There was no way that Loona had just opened up a fucking portal… on the street… in downtown Imp City… in front of the van… while he was fucking driving it . But no, he hadn’t been seeing things. As he watched, the very real portal winked out of existence, just as quickly as it had appeared.
“Loona, what the FUCK ?” he demanded, rounding on her. His heart was pumping hard, shooting adrenaline through his shaking hands as he gripped the wheel.
Loona’s eyes were wide. The book was no longer in her hands, but down on the floorboard between her feet where it had fallen in the chaos. It was still glowing.
“I-I didn’t do that!” she stammered.
Blitzo almost lost his fucking shit. He forced himself to take a breath.
“What do you mean you didn’t do that?” he asked through clenched teeth, trying to keep his voice calm and failing miserably. “You had the book open. You were reading it. Boom. Portal.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know… I just… I think I blacked out.” Her voice was quiet and uncertain. Blitzo looked over at her again and saw that he was not just imagining the fear that tinged her voice. She reached down to retrieve the book and hugged it to her chest, like a child with a comforting stuffed animal.
The hot ball of rage in Blitzo’s stomach cooled and then iced over with worry.
“Give Mille the book.”
Loona’s head snapped up. “What?”
“Give her the book. You’re taking a break from it. You’re done for a while. You’re not taking it home with you anymore. It’s staying locked in the office, where it belongs. Millie will run the portal show for now.”
“You can’t just–!” she tried to protest, but he cut her off.
“You almost killed us! Do you not get that? The book is messing with you, and you’re letting it! You’re exhausted from staying up all night reading it, and when you do sleep you have fucked-up nightmares. I can hear you screaming in your sleep, so don’t try to deny it.”
Loona stared at him as he pulled into their building’s lot and parked.
“I didn’t know you could hear me,” she mumbled.
Blitzo sighed. The unspent adrenaline in his system was waning and he suddenly felt very tired. “Look. I know you’re trying to help. But you’re not going to do anyone any good if you keep going like this. Hand over the book, sweetie.”
Loona looked over her shoulder into the backseat. Wordlessly, but not without some obvious reluctance, she handed Millie the book. Blitzo leaned around his driver’s seat.
“You two alive? Sorry about the bumpy ride.”
Millie took the book from Loona. “Mox banged his head pretty good, but nothing serious,” she said. She was keeping her voice light, as if this whole thing were just a minor inconvenience and everything was fine. Beside her, Mox rubbed his head with one hand, but gave a thumbs up with the other. On a day when things had gone from good, to bad, to terrible in a span of twenty minutes, Blitzo deeply appreciated their positivity. Even if it was forced.
“But, sir,” Moxxie piped up as they all got out of the van. “Seriously. About that check engine light…”
Millie disliked Mondays, but not for the same reasons most people did. For her, they were just boring. On Mondays, they almost never went out on assignment unless there was a special need to. Mondays were for arranging appointments with new clients, calling back current clients to let them know about their case status, filing the previous week’s payroll, and meetings. Endless meetings.
Mondays lacked the action that Millie craved, but she knew they were necessary to keeping the business side of the operation running smoothly.
After they had made the morning calls on their lists, the four of them filed into the meeting room for their pre-lunch meeting. As Blitzo passed the whiteboard, he picked up a marker and absently made a tally-mark below the dozens of others he had made over the past few months. Above the tallies was one of Blitzo’s drawings, a rough doodle of Prince Stolas surrounded by question marks and the words “WHERE IS HE?” scrawled along the side.
In the beginning, right after Prince Stolas had gone missing, it had been terrible. Blitzo had just… well, it didn’t really matter now. He was doing better. Almost back to normal, Millie thought. But for a while there, she had been truly concerned for his health and sanity. But now he was drinking less. He was almost never hung over–or straight-up drunk–at work anymore. And he was even starting to gain back some of the weight that he had lost from not consuming anything but cocaine and whiskey for days at a time as he scoured newspaper articles and beat the absolute shit out of people who he thought might know something.
More than once, Blitzo had stumbled in late to work drunk, high, and covered head to toe in someone else’s blood. On those days, Millie mostly just stayed in his office with him until work was over, sitting on the edge of his desk and holding his head in her lap as he wept.
But that hadn’t happened in a long time. He was definitely better. More well-adjusted. He had not given up his search, but he had become less frantic about it. Maybe part of him had started to believe that Stolas was dead. Honestly, at this point maybe that was just easier, because then he could allow himself to move on. Clearly, though, he wasn’t quite ready for that yet.
Each morning, without fail, Blitzo looked at his little drawing of Stolas and made another tally, muttering the number to himself. Today’s number was 186.
Stolas, Prince of the Ars Goetia, had been missing for 186 days and not a single fucking creature in all of Hell seemed to know what happened to him. It had been all over the newspapers for the first few months, reporters badgering poor Octavia for information. Luckily, that had died down rather quickly. With no developments in the story, the public lost interest. Most just assumed he was dead at this point.
Millie placed the Grimoire on the edge of the conference table and took her seat. She’d meant to put it away in the safe in Blitzo’s office since they wouldn’t be needing it today, but she’d gotten caught up with a rather needy client and just hadn’t had the chance yet.
“So, first order of business,” Blitzo began as both Moxxie and Loona took their seats. Millie saw Loona glance down at the book and then quickly look away again, brow furrowed. “We need a new rug. The office looks like shit.”
“Sir, we literally just got a new rug,” Moxxie pointed out. “We put it in last week.”
“Yeah, and it looks like shit . We need a better rug. A cooler rug. Who the fuck picked that one out?”
Both Millie and Loona looked at Moxxie.
“It’s a nice rug! It looks classy!” Mox protested, obviously offended that his taste in decor was being questioned.
“It’s ugly as fuck,” Loona said as she scrolled through her phone.
“What?! You clearly have no idea what a good-quality–”
Millie patted him on the shoulder. “It is a little ugly as fuck, baby.”
A look of betrayal ran through Moxxie’s face but he didn’t say anything else. He sat back in his chair, arms crossed, and pouted.
“What about this one?” Loona raised up to show Blitzo her phone. “It’s got horses on it.”
Blitzo immediately brightened as he looked at the screen. “Sweetie, it’s amazing! Oooh, it comes in different colors! Show Millie!”
Well, at least the two of them seemed to be over their spat from this morning. Both were acting like nothing had happened.
Loona leaned over the table to give Mille a glimpse of this “amazing” horse rug. As she did, her hand unintentionally brushed against the Grimoire. Millie didn’t notice at first that Loona had absolutely frozen where she stood. She was too busy looking at what might actually be one of the ugliest rugs she’d ever seen in her life. But there were horses on it, and that would make Blitzo happy, so she decided not to say anything.
“...Loona, are you ok?” Moxxie’s voice had gone from insulted to curious. Millie looked up from the phone to Loona’s face. Her brow was furrowed, eyes unfocused.
Blitzo reached out to put a hand on her back. “Loony?”
Before anyone could do anything, the book suddenly quivered and a purple-blue aura danced from its edges. A harsh sound like the cracking of a tree branch erupted as it turned on its spine and opened itself. All of them jumped back as the pages turned, fluttering as if caught by a strong wind. Moxxie’s hand went automatically to his gun, but Millie reached out to put calming fingers against his forearm.
“Wait.”
The book landed on a glowing page of symbols and quivered again. Loona’s eyes were locked onto it and the red of her sclera flashed purple in the sudden light as a portal appeared in the wall toward the far end of the conference table.
“I didn’t do that!” she said, for the second time that morning, backing away from the book.
All of them stared into the gaping void in front of them.
There was nothing there.
Whatever lay beyond was utterly dark, just a black hole in the wall. It looked exactly like the portal that had appeared on the street during the drive over.
“...Maybe the book is trying to tell us something,” Moxxie said, breaking the unnerved silence. Millie could tell that his fingers still itched to draw his gun, but what would he even do with it? Shoot the book? Or the fucking portal?
“It’s not alive!” Loona snapped back, but she didn’t sound entirely certain. “It can’t be telling us anything.” But then she paused and her eyes widened, just slightly. “Do… Do any of you smell that?”
Millie dared to take a step forward and sniffed. It smelled a little like chlorine, but also like rain. It reminded her of the storms that used to rock her little farmhouse as a child.
“Definitely something familiar about it…” Blitzo mumbled.
“Ozone?” Moxxie suggested.
“Like from my dream.” Fear and uncertainty tinged Loona’s words. “Blitzo… Blitzo, do you think…?”
Millie followed Loona’s gaze over to Blitzo. He was looking back and forth between his daughter and the portal.
“Alright Loona. We’ll check out your weird portal.”
“ My portal? I didn’t make it! The book did! You just saw!”
“I have no idea what I just saw. But I want to believe you. So, who’s up for some exploring?”
“Ooh, me!” Millie volunteered gleefully. Anything but calling more clients.
Blitzo grinned at her and headed toward the portal. Millie followed. As they reached the edge of the void, Millie could see white tile on the floor inside, just barely illuminated by the office lights behind them.
“Cover me,” Blitzo ordered and jumped down over the edge of the portal without waiting for a reply. Both Millie and Moxxie poured in after him, Moxxie with his gun drawn and Millie with a knife in one hand and her phone in the other. She flicked on the LED flashlight and pointed it to light Blitzo’s way.
The room was large and clinical-feeling. The smell was much stronger on this side of the portal. The edge of her flashlight found a closed door and she turned the beam toward it. There was a lightswitch on the wall beside it. She pressed it, but nothing happened.
“No power,” she said, then turned and shined her light around the room. “What is this place?”
“Sir, we’ve got a body.” Moxxie’s voice echoed from the shadows to her left. “Dead sinner, I think.”
Millie turned her light toward them and saw the faint outline of a body suspended by chains attached to the ceiling.