Black City bw-5

by Christina Henry

  Nathaniel’s hand found mine in the darkness, and I let him hold it. I didn’t want to get separated.

  The convention center seemed so large and empty as we crossed through it, a relic from a time that had passed and might never return. How could the world go on as it had been before everyone knew that vampires existed? How long would it be before other things-that-went-bump-in-the-night decided not to hide their existence anymore?

  We paused as we reached the pedestrian tunnel that crossed to the lakeside center. The passage yawned into the darkness. Nathaniel squeezed my hand.

  “I cannot sense the vampires any longer,” he said. “They may have rejoined the horde.”

  He dropped the veil. It was a waste of energy if we didn’t need it.

  “I can’t believe the death of one of their own would go unnoticed,” I said as we stepped into the tunnel.

  The bridge crossed over Lake Shore Drive and was lined with windows. The flurry of activity that we had seen that morning had long since ended. Cars sat lined up bumper to bumper. Their occupants had either been eaten by the vampires or fled successfully on foot.

  My palms were sweaty. The air inside the tunnel was stale and hot despite the cold outside. I was afraid, and it was a terrible shock to realize this. I’d faced many enemies, and been many times outnumbered. I’d defeated plenty of powerful foes, much to their shock and mine.

  But I didn’t have my wings anymore, and my magic was quiet. I had a child to protect. I’d never felt more vulnerable. The dark had become a place of lurking nightmares, and I wasn’t sure I could overcome them.

  We reached the lakeside center without incident. But my dread only intensified. My luck was not that good. I’d never been able to hide from the monster in the closet. My monster always came out to try to eat my head.

  “You must calm yourself,” Nathaniel said softly. “I can feel your blood pulsing through your hand. If I can detect it, then the vampires will be able to as well. They are bred to detect weakness, to feed upon distress.”

  “I know,” I said, and my voice didn’t sound like my own. I could hear the strain and the panic. I was panicking. I never panicked.

  “You are not yourself,” Nathaniel said, and scooped me up like a baby in his arms.

  “You c-c-can’t,” I said. “How will you fight if you’re holding me?”

  “Shh,” Nathaniel said. “I do not sense any threat nearby, but you will draw one to us if you continue to behave thus.”

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I whispered. I could feel my heartstone inside my chest, pulsing hot, but my skin was cold.

  “I suspect that you are exhausted and, if you will forgive me for saying so, in the grip of your hormones,” he said. He moved swiftly through the dark, descending to street level.

  “You think this is happening because I’m pregnant? Is it normal for pregnant women to have panic attacks?”

  “Is it normal for a part-human to carry the child of a creature that was half-nephilim? Is it normal for a pregnant woman to run all over the city fighting demons and vampires and then spend hours watching over me when she ought to be sleeping?” He sounded angry with himself for spending so much time resting.

  We emerged from the lakeside center by a small walkway that connected to the lakefront path. There was a bike rack with a rusty bike frame attached to it just in front of the doors. Both of the bike’s wheels were missing.

  To the north of us was the museum campus. I could see the dome of the Adler Planetarium on its jetty protruding into the lake, and the distinctive bowl of the Soldier Field. The Field Museum and the Shedd Aquarium lay beyond, and farther past was the beautiful skyline of my city.

  To the right the lake crashed against the shore, plates of ice shifting and breaking. The wind whipped frosted caps of waves in the moonlight, and more stars than I’d ever been able to view above Chicago.

  The lights were out as far as the eye could see. The city had been swallowed by the night. In the distance I could hear the occasional scream, the staccato pop of gunfire. Overlaying that noise was a steady, high-pitched hum, like the buzz of cicadas—the sound of the vampire horde moving through the city.

  Nathaniel paused. I could tell that he was assessing the possibility of a vampire attack. My panic had eased once we got outside, and with its diminishment came embarrassment.

  “You can put me down now,” I said.

  Nathaniel shifted his gaze to my face. My cheeks heated under his assessing look. After a minute he placed me on my feet. He was wearing only his black dress pants and boots, and the sheath for his sword was slung over his shoulder. The cold did not seem to disturb him in the least.

  “We must try to escape the horde,” Nathaniel said apologetically. “I know you are tired.”

  I shook my head. “You’re right. We have to get home somehow and meet up with the others. We’re not going to get there unless we walk.”

  We fell into step beside each other on the path. I figured we were ten or eleven miles from my house. At the pace I was trudging it would take at least four hours to get home. Nathaniel was on high alert, but we walked for several minutes without encountering anyone or anything.

  The vampires did seem to be avoiding the lake. I wondered why. As far as I knew, nothing more dangerous than sturgeon lived there. As far as I knew.

  I looked at the dark surface of the lake, which suddenly seemed like it had some unknown menace lurking in its depths. I shook my head. I had enough menace in my life without imagining more. If there was a monster in the lake, then it could stay there, and so much the better if it worked as an anti-vampire repellant.

  We passed under the overpass next to the Shedd Aquarium. The path curved around the building before turning north again. Water broke against the rocks below the safety wall. Nathaniel paused beneath the overpass.

  “There is someone on the path ahead,” he whispered, drawing his sword.

  I couldn’t make out the person—or creature. It must be keeping to the shadows.

  “Is it human?” I said very softly.

  “No,” he replied. “Stay back.”

  The moon shifted behind the clouds.

  One second Nathaniel was beside me, and the next he was gone. I didn’t even see him move.

  The clouds drifted past the moon. I saw Nathaniel silhouetted in the lunar light. He stood over an unmoving form, his sword at his side. The tip of the blade faced the ground. There was a dark stain sliding down the metallic surface. He turned his head to look over his shoulder at me, and his expression was full of savage glee. He did not look like himself. He looked like…someone. I couldn’t put my finger on it. Someone I had seen recently, had spoken to…

  “You may approach,” he said, and the smoky tendrils of memory slipped away before I could grasp them.

  I came to Nathaniel’s side and looked down at the creature he’d beheaded. It was a sort of humanoid/snake combo.

  “That thing looks like Amarantha and Violet after Lucifer cursed them,” I said.

  “It is one of Focalor’s foot soldiers,” Nathaniel said.

  “Focalor, huh?” I said, nudging the body with the toe of my boot. “I’d almost forgotten about him with everything else going on. Do you think he’s behind the vampire attacks?”

  “He was one of Azazel’s conspirators in the uprising against Lucifer. But I am not certain that Azazel would have trusted Focalor with his plans for the serum and the vampires. I always sensed that Azazel was not entirely forthcoming with Focalor.”

  “Then why are Focalor’s flunkies hanging around Chicago?” I asked.

  Nathaniel shrugged. “Focalor knows how to take advantage of a bad situation. And he is not the only one.”

  “The pix demons,” I said.

  Nathaniel nodded. “And others like them. There will be many creatures that see this city as a fruit ripe for the plucking. Soon it will become a battleground.”

  In my mind’s eye I saw my fair city decimated by violenc
e, the humans dead or gone, demons tearing one another to shreds in the streets as they fought to give their master a jewel for their crowns.

  If that happened, I, too, would be dead, and my child with me, for none of those masters could possibly allow me to live. I would always be a threat, especially with the shadow of Lucifer standing behind me.

  Lucifer would drop the magical equivalent of a nuclear bomb on the city if I was dead, and that would be the end of any war. The Chicago I knew would cease to exist either way.

  “Every time I think I’ve thought through all the implications, I realize how stupid I’ve been,” I said tiredly.

  “You are not stupid,” Nathaniel said.

  “I must be. Why else would I think I could stop this?” I jabbed my hand in the direction of the skyline. “I’ve got enemies galore but hardly any allies to speak of. I put myself at a disadvantage by giving up my Agent’s powers so I could make a point to Sokolov.”

  “You are still the granddaughter of Lucifer, as you yourself told Sokolov.”

  “As far as I can tell, being the granddaughter of Lucifer has brought me nothing but grief,” I said, my lips pressed together as I stared off in the distance. “And, Nathaniel…he’s backing me into a cage. I can feel it. Slowly, inexorably. I twist and I turn, I growl and I claw, but Lucifer is the lion tamer and he holds the whip. Soon I’ll realize I’ve gone too far backward and the cage door will close.”

  Nathaniel said nothing. Nathaniel, whatever he felt for me, would never go against Lucifer voluntarily. He had done so once at Azazel’s behest, but I was sure that he would not put his existence on the line for me to squirm away from the Morningstar. He seemed unable to do so himself.

  “What did Lucifer do to you?” I asked, giving voice to the question I’d wondered earlier.

  He was silent for a long time. I wasn’t sure whether he was going to answer me.

  “Lord Lucifer excels at letting you think that your choices are your own when they are actually his,” Nathaniel said finally.

  “I know,” I said, thinking of my marriage, the relationship that was forbidden until Lucifer had decided otherwise. At the time I’d thought it was a reward. Once Gabriel died and I’d realized I was pregnant, I discovered that Lucifer had manipulated us so that he would get the grandchild he wanted. “What did you want so badly that Lucifer gave it to you?”

  “Power,” Nathaniel said. “I wanted to be respected, to have the status I felt that I deserved as the son of a Grigori. It is only now that I see that I desired power because Lucifer taught me to do so, because he manipulated me into wanting it. To betraying…”

  He trailed off, ruminating on the past.

  “Betraying who?” I asked quietly.

  It seemed like he was drowning in his memories, and that he was having a hard time swimming back to the surface.

  “My mother,” he said.

  “Your mother? What did she ever do to Lucifer?” I asked.

  “She chose my father,” Nathaniel said simply. “Lucifer wanted her, and when Lucifer desires something, he gets it. My mother, Cassiel, would not have him. She already loved Zerachiel. Lucifer seemed to withdraw from the field with grace. When I was born, he took a special interest in me, favoring me over the other children of the Grigori. He was like a beloved uncle, always ready with a game or a prize. He told me I was special, that I would sit beside his throne one day. Cassiel and Zerachiel took Lucifer’s interest to mean that they were forgiven. It was not so.

  “When I was old enough, he promised me that if I would help him with some small tasks here and there, I could come to his court as an apprentice to Azazel, his own right hand. It was heady stuff for a young man. Azazel held much power in Lucifer’s realm. As his apprentice I would be ranked above many of the fallen who were much older and more experienced than I.

  “The tasks seemed simple enough at first. I was asked to carry messages, and I did, full of my own importance. Then I was asked my opinion on events I witnessed in my father’s court. Soon I was eavesdropping on private conversations, lurking in places where I might be well positioned to hear, and reporting, always, back to Lord Lucifer.

  “Then, one day, I fell asleep in the garden under the gazebo. The flowers and grass were tall there, and I was well hidden by the foliage. I had simply been enjoying the sun and drifted off. When I awoke, I heard voices arguing. They were trying to be circumspect, but they were loud enough for me to hear that one of them was my mother. The other was a man I did not know. They were speaking of Lord Lucifer. I did not hear all of the words. But I heard Cassiel say ‘treason.’

  “I remained where I was until their conversation was concluded. All I could think of was that I had uncovered a plot of treason, and Lord Lucifer would reward me well for such a discovery. I rushed to report what little I had heard to the Morningstar. I did not consider that my mother would be caught in the net. I was thinking only of the other man, the one she had argued with. I thought Lord Lucifer would ask my mother whom she was speaking to so that he could find the real conspirator. I thought that she was trying to dissuade the man.

  “Of course, I was young and foolish. Lord Lucifer considered them both as plotters, and when my mother was taken for questioning and tortured, she admitted as such. But she would never tell Lord Lucifer who the other man was.

  “She was executed in the Morningstar’s court. When my mother was beheaded I was standing at the right hand of Azazel, who stood at the right hand of Lucifer.”

  He fell silent again. My heart ached for the boy he had been, for the weight that he had carried over the years. He had watched his mother killed because she had committed treason against Lucifer, because he had revealed her.

  He must have thought his life was over when Azazel had ordered him to participate in a rebellion against their highest lord. I wondered, not for the first time, why Lucifer had allowed Nathaniel to live. Then I realized how much Lucifer enjoyed serving his revenge ice-cold.

  “Cassiel picked Zerachiel over Lucifer, and then he waited years and years, until you were born and old enough to be used as a tool for vengeance?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Nathaniel said. “It is why I tell you over and over not to cross him.”

  “And you still declare your fealty to him?”

  “I have no choice. I must have a master. It is the way of my kind. And as Lucifer is the most powerful of us all, it is safer to be under his wing than in his sights.”

  “You aren’t under his wing,” I said. “Lucifer plays the long game.”

  Nathaniel’s life would come to a sudden end one day for his participation in Azazel’s plot. I knew that with the certainty of the sun rising, and I was sure that Nathaniel knew it, too. Yet he kept protecting me, kept putting his life at risk, kept trying to restore his honor even though he was a dead man walking. I realized I could love that kind of man, and that was a disconcerting thought.

  “Let us keep walking,” Nathaniel finally said. “There may be other creatures lurking and it is unwise for us to linger so long in an exposed area.”

  As we walked it was hard to get my mind off the tale that Nathaniel had just told. It made me see him in an entirely different light, one in which his selfish behavior and his icy demeanor were just a shield to protect himself. Nathaniel was brooding, locked in his own thoughts.

  We continued on the path around the aquarium without further incident. I wondered what would become of all the animals inside with no keepers to care for them.

  Beezle liked to go to the aquarium sometimes—safely hidden in my pocket, of course. He enjoyed the seahorses, of all things, and the otters. He also liked the popcorn stand on the lower level, because he could eat popcorn and watch the dolphins swimming.

  No one would be taking care of the dolphins now, or the sharks or the starfish. Some of them might be dead already with the power out and the filters on the tanks silent. Whatever wasn’t dead would be soon.

  It was another problem I could not fix, another traged
y I couldn’t prevent. And then I was crying again, crying so hard I could hardly see in front of me. It was almost foolish to weep over animals when so many people had died in one day, but I couldn’t help it. I was sick of death. In my life I’d seen more of it than I ever wanted.

  Nathaniel stopped, touched my shoulder. I turned toward him. He did not offer platitudes. He did not embrace me. He wiped the tears from my cheeks with his hands, his face troubled. His hands lingered on my face, cupped it as he studied me. The silence between us stretched thin. I realized I held my breath, and my tears had stopped.

  “You do not love me,” Nathaniel said. His voice was steady.

  I thought of Gabriel. “No.”

  “You do not need love for this,” he said, and then his mouth was on mine, savage and unrelenting, taking my breath away.

  6

  I FELT THE FLARE OF HEAT BETWEEN US, THE POWER that flowed from him now that he had been restored by sleep. I clung to him, unsure about what I needed but knowing that this was what I wanted.

  Nathaniel offered me no comfort. He did not treat me gently. I didn’t want gentle. I wanted his power and his ferocity. I wanted him to be everything Gabriel wasn’t so that I could forget how much it hurt, just for a little while.

  He pulled his mouth away, his breath harsh, and looked into my eyes. “You do not need to love me. But you do need to choose me.”

  I started to speak, but he put his thumb over my mouth.

  “If you choose me because you want comfort, I will not object. If you choose me because you want to forget, I do not object. If it is simply a matter of lust, I do not object. But I want you to look at me and know who I am. I want you to choose me, not fall into my arms in secret and pretend I am somebody else.”

  I nodded. He was right. However complicated our relationship was, he didn’t deserve to be a cipher for Gabriel. Gabriel’s memory was worth more than that to me.

  “I’m not ready to make that choice,” I said, moving reluctantly away from him.

  He released me, his hands brushing over my throat, my shoulders, before pulling away.