Black City bw-5

by Christina Henry

  My anger drained out of me suddenly, leaving me exhausted. “Get out of here before I get mad,” I said.

  The other two stared at me with mouths agape while the third boy turned and ran.

  “Go,” I repeated.

  The other two followed, dropping their weapons on the ground in their haste to escape.

  I dragged myself down the street, up the stairs and into my apartment, anticipating the expectant glances of my friends.

  Instead, no one was there except Nathaniel. He looked grim. He held a piece of paper in one hand and he stared at it as if he hoped his gaze would set it on fire. He had removed his coat and shoes and rolled up his sleeves.

  “Where’s everyone else?” I said, putting my sword on the side table and taking off my wet boots.

  “Beezle, Samiel and Chloe are downstairs. I believe Samiel and Chloe are…reuniting,” Nathaniel said delicately. “The gargoyle said something about a video game. J.B. and Jude have gone to the Agency.”

  “To the Agency? Why? J.B. shouldn’t be going to the Agency. He should be recovering,” I said.

  “He went to deal with this,” Nathaniel said, thrusting the paper at me.

  It was an ordinary piece of printer paper with the Agency’s seal at the top. The message below was brief.

  Dear Ms. Black,

  It has come to our attention that at 2:29 pm today you passed beyond the Door. This is your second offense. As a former Agent, you are well aware of the consequences should you continue to defy the Agency.

  This is your final warning.

  Sokolov

  I was so angry I could hardly see. I ripped the paper into a bunch of tiny pieces, threw them on the floor, jumped on them several times, picked up the pieces again, smashed them in a ball and then set them on fire in the palm of my hand. The paper went up in a whoosh of smoke and ash.

  “Madeline, calm yourself,” Nathaniel said.

  “Don’t tell me to calm down. There are people dying all over this city. Soon they’ll be dying all over the country. And all they care about is a violation of their precious rules,” I spat. “Sokolov doesn’t care that we’re in the middle of the goddamned apocalypse.”

  Deprived of the proxy of the Agency’s letter, I went to the hutch in the dining room and pulled out a wineglass. I threw it at the wall with all the force I could muster. It shattered into a very satisfying kajillion pieces, but I still didn’t feel better. I wanted to find Sokolov and pound his smug little face until his features were unrecognizable.

  I stomped away from the hutch, looking for something else to break. Nathaniel stepped in front of me.

  “Madeline, stop. Think,” Nathaniel said. “A temper tantrum is not productive.”

  “This is not a tantrum,” I said furiously.

  “It looks like one,” he said.

  I clenched my fists. I had so much anger inside, months of it, months of frustration and pain and fear mixing with fury until I felt like I would burst. I needed somewhere to put that anger. Either I could vent it on Sokolov, or I could take it out on whatever was closest.

  “You’ll do,” I said, and pulled Nathaniel’s head down to mine.

  I was truly in the grip of madness now. I sent my power and my anger coursing into him, pushing up against his magic. His own power met mine and we crashed against each other in a furious storm.

  He pulled my sweater off, tore the fastening of my bra. His hands replaced it, then his mouth. And then his mouth went lower, and my pants disappeared. I writhed under him, the power and the anger and the lust stretching my skin, making me burn.

  His mouth touched the core of me. I arched under him and the magic inside me surged as I peaked. I found the heart of his power, the true heart, the one that Puck had kept hidden from him his whole life, and I lit it on fire. When I did that, the secret source of my own magic was revealed, and I suddenly understood everything Lucifer had told me.

  I had never seen, never known, the depths of my magic. I could do anything. I could find the hidden paths of the universe. I could defy death. And no one would be able to stop me.

  Nathaniel reared back and away from me, his hands on his face, in the grip of the revelation of his legacy. He was surrounded by a halo of blue, and his hair was darkening, turning black before my eyes.

  The skin of my back tore away, and I screamed as my wings formed anew. I rolled to my stomach, panting, feeling the muscles stretching, the brush of feathers against my skin. Fine particles of silver floated in the air. The mad surge receded, leaving me spent. I put my head in my hands and covered my body with my wings.

  Nathaniel cried out once. I felt the pulse of magic in the air as it brushed over me. Then he was silent except for the sound of his breath, harsh in the silence of the room.

  Now that the insanity was over I felt embarrassed. Maybe we hadn’t officially done the deed but we’d come pretty damn close, and I was naked. But I couldn’t lie with my head in my hands forever. Sooner or later I would have to turn around and face him.

  I sat up, coiling my wings around me to keep my nudity covered. Nathaniel watched me in wonder.

  “Your wings,” he said, and reached out to touch the feathers. “They’re just as I saw in my dream.”

  I realized then that it was not my black Agent’s wings that had returned. The feathers were silver, and glittered even in the weak rays of the ceiling lightbulb.

  “You can destroy the vampires,” Nathaniel said. “I felt the strength inside you, at the end.”

  “Nathaniel,” I said, and took a deep breath. I needed to get this out quickly before mortification set in. “I’m sorry I did that. I’m sorry I used you.”

  “Sweet Madeline,” he said, and bent to kiss me again, gently, just for a moment. “Do not apologize. You have given me a gift. I know who I am now. My power is no longer hidden from me.”

  “It’s no gift to find out that you’re related to Lucifer, believe me,” I said. “Your hair has turned black. You look more like Puck than ever.”

  Nathaniel stood and looked at himself in the small mirror that hung over the side table. I saw him touch his hair in curiosity, and then his face.

  “It’s strange, is it not?” he said. “My face is still my own. It is only my coloring that mimics him now.”

  “You’re wearing his colors,” I said. “Literally. Everyone will know to whose house you belong.”

  “My father will be heartbroken,” Nathaniel murmured, and I saw a shadow cross his expression at the thought of Zerachiel. “I was his only son, his pride. Even when all believed I had participated in the rebellion against Lucifer, my father did not lose faith in me. Now he will know that I am not a son to him, that he has nothing, that he has been a cuckold.”

  “I wouldn’t go anywhere near the Grigori, if I were you,” I said. “You heard Puck. He and Lucifer don’t get along. If you showed up in court, or even went to see Zerachiel, Lucifer will probably find some excuse to have you killed.”

  I stood up awkwardly. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  I went into the bedroom to get dressed, and tried not to imagine that Nathaniel was watching my naked butt as I walked away.

  I put on some underwear and a pair of jeans, then took out a new bra and T-shirt. I soon discovered that it was a lot more difficult to get dressed when your wings didn’t recede into your back at will.

  “How the hell do I put this on?” I said.

  “You’ll need to cut slashes to accommodate your wings in all of your clothing,” Nathaniel said. “And then they will furl up small enough for you to dress. Once you have your top on, you can uncoil them again.”

  I turned around, holding the shirt to my bare chest. Nathaniel smiled.

  “Madeline, I have already seen it all,” he said. “There is no need for shame.”

  “Oh, yes, there is,” I said.

  Nathaniel approached me, pulled the shirt away from my fingers. I sucked in my breath. I guess I’d thought the electricity between us would go aw
ay once his power was revealed, but it felt like nothing had changed.

  His hands went to my breasts, and I closed my eyes.

  “I know you have not chosen,” Nathaniel said. “But don’t think you can pretend it did not happen. I will not let you forget that it happened.”

  I put my hands on his wrists so he would stop, so I could think again. “Help me get dressed,” I said raggedly.

  He chuckled, and went to get a pair of scissors.

  Once we had fixed up my shirt and my favorite sweater, I sat down on the bed to coil my hair into a braid. It had grown about another three inches during our interlude on the dining room floor.

  “If we keep this up, you can start calling me Rapunzel,” I said.

  “I don’t think any interactions we might have in the future will have the same effect,” Nathaniel said. “You have come fully into your power, and so have I.”

  Yeah, but we haven’t had a complete “interaction” yet, I thought. What if the full power of Puck and Lucifer were combined within us?

  It was a little scary to contemplate. I wrapped a rubber band around the bottom of my braid and stood up.

  “Time to get rid of this vampire problem,” I said.

  “Shall I gather our forces, then?”

  “No,” I said, going into the dining room and slinging my sword across my body. “Leave them be. You and I can handle this.”

  Plus I didn’t feel like having a conference in which I was a) grilled about the sudden appearance of silver wings, and b) questioned about every decision I might make. There was something to be said for traveling light.

  We didn’t even bother going downstairs. I didn’t want the others to hear us on the stairs and come outside. I opened the kitchen window and flew out, Nathaniel following.

  I’d been without wings for only a short time, but I’d almost forgotten the wonderful feeling of freedom that came from flying. I wished I had time to enjoy it, to swoop and twirl and revel in the joy for a few moments.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt happy like that, happiness untempered by responsibility and fear and guilt and confusion. Even when I was with Gabriel there had always been a sense that our time was limited, that the bliss we felt couldn’t last.

  I hardly remembered being a child, much less a carefree one, although I suppose there must have been a time when I turned cartwheels and collected dandelions like other little girls.

  All my life, death had been a constant companion. Death was the reason my mother was never at home, the reason why my father was gone. After my mother died, death was my profession.

  And once I met Lucifer and Azazel, death become the instrument by which I exerted my will. There was a trail of bodies behind me, and my hands were soaked in blood. I should have been more troubled by this, but I wasn’t. Every choice I had made had been in defense of me and mine.

  The gray clouds over Lake Michigan were still swirling, and I could see a poison green fog rising above the surface.

  “Alerian rises,” Nathaniel said. “Can you not feel it?”

  I could feel it. I hadn’t been able to before my new wings and new powers had emerged, but now I sensed Alerian’s presence the same way I could sense Lucifer’s. He was still muted, though, like he hadn’t fully awoken yet.

  “Let’s worry about Alerian later,” I said. “I’ve got a checklist I’m working from here.”

  “Where should we go?” Nathaniel said.

  “We want all of the vampires to gather in one place,” I said. “So we need a place that will accommodate them, and then we need to call them to us.”

  “And can you do that now?” Nathaniel said.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “I realized a few things about Azazel’s formula that can work to our advantage.”

  “Which are?”

  “First, Azazel used the blood of Agents. Lucifer and Puck both told me, ‘Once an Agent, always an Agent.’ I realize now that they were both trying to help me in their usual backhanded way. I am an Agent still, even if I’ve chosen not to be affiliated with them. They can’t take that away from me. The power was always there inside me. I just didn’t realize it.”

  “And how will this help you to draw the vampires to you?”

  “I have an affinity with the Agents’ blood that’s in the formula. In addition, I was the daughter of the maker of that formula. I’m pretty sure that Azazel put a little of himself inside that serum, too. Remember how the vampires behaved when we found them at Azazel’s mansion?”

  Realization dawned on Nathaniel’s face. “Like zombies. Like they were under some kind of compulsion.”

  I nodded. “How much do you want to bet that Azazel made sure there was some kind of fail-safe in the serum? If Therion tried defying Azazel, then dear old Dad would be able to bring all of the vamps that had taken the formula under his control.”

  “If you exert your will, the vampires that have taken the serum will not be able to resist you, just as they would not have been able to resist Azazel,” Nathaniel said.

  “That’s what I’m counting on,” I said.

  I pointed to the giant bowl that protruded from the top of Soldier Field. “What do you think? Can we fit all of the vampires in there?”

  “Even if they cannot all fit inside the building, they will gather near it if your ability to call them to you works,” Nathaniel said. “But I think it will be sufficient.”

  “I hope it will,” I said, and we flew toward the Chicago Bears home field.

  If there were more vampires than could fit inside a giant football stadium, then our troubles were bigger than I thought. Despite my newfound power and my expressed confidence to Nathaniel, I wasn’t as certain as I seemed. When we’d flown over the city as the invasion started, it seemed that there were millions of vampires, but that couldn’t be. There was nowhere for all of them to hide. Except…

  “Nathaniel, where did all those vampires come from in the first place?” I said. “I can’t believe we never thought about this before.”

  Nathaniel frowned. “I presumed that Therion and Azazel gathered vampires from other regions to them. The courts in Chicago were certainly not that big.”

  “But where was Therion keeping them all?” I asked, remembering the vampires that had poured into Daley Plaza. “They had to have somewhere to gather.”

  “They seemed to be coming from the underground,” Nathaniel said.

  I nodded. “There could be thousands more down there, in the pedways and the freight tunnels.”

  “If any of them have taken the serum, then you should still be able to call them to you,” Nathaniel said.

  “What if not all of them have taken it?” I asked.

  “As you say, let us worry about it at another time,” he said. “The majority of the vampires that we saw were strolling under the sun, and you know that you can reach them. Once we have wiped out the majority, then we can deal with the stragglers of this infestation.”

  “Okay,” I said, trying not to worry. “Okay.”

  We approached the museum campus and Soldier Field from the north, almost perfectly retracing the path we had walked just a few days before. The surface of Lake Michigan was covered in Alerian’s fog for as far as the eye could see. Beneath the fog there were dark shadows moving.

  “No one is ever going to come back to this city,” I said, my heart breaking a little. “And if anyone does, they’ll never truly feel safe here again.”

  Nathaniel followed my gaze, saw the shadows shifting. “You do not know that Alerian intends harm to the people of the city,” he said, but he didn’t sound very certain.

  “He doesn’t have to intend harm in order for people to get caught in the cross fire,” I said.

  We flew over the top of the large bowl that perched on top of the original structure of Soldier Field. I lowered down to the center of the field, right on the fifty-yard line.

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen when I try to do this,” I warned Nathaniel. “
You might want to be ready to run.”

  He looked insulted. “I would not leave you any more than you would leave me. Shall I help you? I can boost your power, as we did before.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said. We’d end up naked and rolling in the grass instead of wiping out the vampires. “Just make sure nothing attacks me while I try to draw the vamps here, okay?”

  Nathaniel nodded. “Very well.”

  I closed my eyes and drew deep within myself, searching for the spark of magic that came from Azazel. It was buried deep. I hadn’t acknowledged my relationship with Azazel for some time, but blood didn’t lie. He was inside me, whether I wanted him to be there or not.

  When I found the source of Azazel’s power I drew it forth so that it was at the forefront of my magic. Underneath that stream I layered my Agent’s strength. Finally, I took both abilities, wound them together, and used the power of the Morningstar to push the call forth. The call of blood. It poured out of me, seeking blood that had the same qualities as mine.

  My magic quested all over the city, long tentacles brushing up against living things in search of what it wanted. I felt the presence of other creatures, other things that lay in wait should the vampires fail. Some of those creatures felt me, too, and the wise ones fled.

  I would take care of the stupid ones later.

  My power touched the humans that remained in Chicago, whether imprisoned by Therion or hiding in their own warrens, little rabbits trembling with fear as they felt me pass by.

  The Agents hunched over their desks or collecting souls paused. They felt something, but they couldn’t figure out what. The call of the Agent’s blood had tugged on them for a moment, but since they didn’t also possess the blood of Azazel, it passed them by.

  Only two looked up and knew it was me, and they stood facing each other across a desk.

  “Maddy?” J.B. said, looking into thin air.

  “Black,” Sokolov growled.

  I kept going until I found a vampire that had been infected by the serum. I lit the fire of compulsion inside it, and then I found that I did not have to draw each vampire to me individually. Azazel had made the formula so that when one was compelled, all would have to follow. I pulled them toward me, made it impossible for them to resist.