Black City (A BLACK WINGS NOVEL)

by Christina Henry

  I’d been so preoccupied with the strangeness of the spell that I hadn’t thought through the implications. “Everyone here has been prepped like a lamb for the slaughter. Whoever did this made the hospital a cafeteria for vampires.”

  Nathaniel nodded. “Once the horde gets here, none of these people will survive.”

  I had faced some impossible odds since I discovered I was Azazel’s daughter. I’d fought some of the worst monsters imaginable. But I had never felt so helpless in the face of a threat before.

  “What can we do?” I said.

  Nathaniel shook his head. “There is nothing we can do.”

  “That’s unacceptable,” I said angrily.

  “We cannot undo the spell without knowing who cast it, or even what exactly they cast. If we tried to pull apart the magic without knowing its provenance, we could kill everyone by accident.”

  “We can’t leave these people unprotected,” I said, thinking hard. “What if we cast a protective spell over the sleeping spell? Like a shield, or a veil?”

  “You are talking about magic that requires a tremendous amount of force. We would have to combine our abilities, and even then I am not certain we would be able to do it.”

  “We have to try,” I said. “I can’t leave them like this.”

  “Even if we succeeded, we would likely use up our magic for some time. We would be left vulnerable to attack.”

  “You have a sword. I have a sword. They don’t,” I said, pointing at the slumbering patient.

  Nathaniel looked doubtful. “Lord Lucifer would not condone any course of action that might lead you to harm.”

  “Lucifer can stick it,” I said. “I’m not kneeling to anyone. I don’t know why we keep having this discussion over and over.”

  “I have been alive for hundreds of years, and in all of that time I have had a master. First my father, then Azazel. And always Lord Lucifer ruled over all.”

  “I’ve only been alive for a few decades, but I have never had a master. And I’m not about to start now.”

  “You would not yield to Azazel, either,” Nathaniel murmured. “It angered him so.”

  “Yeah, well, you know what I did to Azazel,” I said.

  “You would not be able to do such a thing to Lord Lucifer, and I advise you not to even think of it,” Nathaniel said seriously.

  “I won’t go after Lucifer if he doesn’t give me a reason to,” I said.

  But I hoped he wouldn’t give me a reason, because despite my bravado even I knew that it was very, very stupid to go one-on-one with Lucifer. I’d felt his power and it was a thing of tremendous force. I also knew that he had shown me only the smallest fraction of it.

  “Sometimes I wonder if you are trying to commit suicide,” Nathaniel said.

  “Sometimes I wonder that myself,” I said.

  “I am not joking,” Nathaniel said.

  “Neither am I.”

  There was a long pause after this, as I contemplated the truth of my statement and Nathaniel watched me with his frozen blue gaze. I didn’t want my baby to die. I wanted to protect him. But sometimes, especially when a fight didn’t seem to be going my way, a fleeting thought would say, If you just let go, you can be with Gabriel. You and the baby.

  “We’re off topic,” I said, wanting to transition away from the awkward moment. “I want to protect the hospital.”

  Nathaniel rubbed his forehead. “I must consider how to do this.”

  While Nathaniel came up with a plan, I thought deep thoughts about who could have cast the sleeping spell in the first place and, more important, why.

  My first thought was that Titania was in league with the vampires. Amarantha had been colluding with Azazel before she died, so there was a very real possibly that the queen of Faerie had picked up where her subordinate had left off. And when I was in Titania and Oberon’s court I’d thought that they were deliberately trying to harm me in order to provoke Lucifer.

  At the time it seemed insane for them to try to tick off the Morningstar, but if they were working with this army of vampires, perhaps they thought they had an advantage.

  My second thought was that one of the Grigori had taken up Azazel’s personal mission. Certainly any of the Grigori would be powerful enough to cast the sleeping spell, and presumably they would also be able to control the army of vampires.

  “But who’s the contact?” I murmured.

  “Pardon?” Nathaniel said, frowning. He looked like he was trying to do intense mathematical calculations in his head.

  “I was just thinking. There has to be a vampire overlord or whatever, right? They’ve got a pretty rigid court system, as far as I know.”

  “They do,” Nathaniel acknowledged. “And their heads of court are kings and queens, like the Faerie.”

  “So they have little courts that are overseen by one big court?”

  Nathaniel nodded. “You are thinking that the vampire king had to know about this prior to the attack.”

  “If he’s got a good grip on his kingdom, then he should definitely have known about this. Is his court in Chicago?”

  Nathaniel shook his head. “No. He is based in New York.”

  “Isn’t it interesting?” I mused. “Lucifer’s court is in Los Angeles. The vampire king’s court is on the opposite coast. The high court of Faerie is in some dimension all its own. And yet all this trouble is here at my door.”

  “Lord Lucifer has made it very clear through both word and deed that he would like you to be his heir.”

  “So you’re saying that as long as Lucifer keeps going around talking me up, the other courts will swipe at me?”

  Nathaniel’s eyes were troubled. “You would be safer if you would accept Lord Lucifer’s offer.”

  “I don’t want to be his heir,” I said. “More important, I don’t want my child to be his heir.”

  “I do not know if you can resist for much longer. Your life is becoming more dangerous by the moment. And Lord Lucifer has a way of boxing you in before you realize the walls are there.”

  Emotion flickered across his face.

  And what did he do to you? I wondered.

  “Look, let’s just get these people as safe as we can so we can go home. I need to figure out some way to eliminate these vampires.”

  “I believe that we can put some form of protection over the hospital,” Nathaniel said. “But in order to do it correctly we will need to leave the building, which will put us at risk.”

  “Why will we need to leave?”

  “Because the conditions of the enchantment will prevent creatures of supernatural origin from entering. If we are inside when the magic is settled, we would be forcibly ejected by the spell.”

  “But what about the Agents that are still in the hospital? Samiel and Jude got Chloe out—at least I hope they did,” I said, fumbling for my cell phone so I could see whether Samiel had sent me a text. I patted all of my pockets and came up empty. “For the love of the Morningstar. I lost it again.”

  “The Agents will be protected,” Nathaniel said. “Their magic is different from a supernatural creature’s.”

  “How?”

  “Agents are human,” Nathaniel said simply. “They may have magical abilities, but at the core of it they are human. Their essence is not born of the otherworld, but this one.”

  “But the spell will keep out vampires and pix demons and all that?”

  Nathaniel nodded. “If it works correctly. If we can project enough power. This is a very large hospital, and I am presuming that you are not simply interested in protecting this building.”

  I shook my head. “Of course not. Why would we protect the helpless patients in this building and ignore the others? I wonder if the whole complex is under the sleeping spell.”

  “We are not going to check,” Nathaniel said.

  “So what are we going to do?”

  Nathaniel looked uncertain for a moment, like he knew I wouldn’t like what he was going to say. “We have
to combine our powers.”

  “Okay…”

  “We will need to mingle our blood in order to most effectively achieve this.”

  “Are we talking about an I’m-your-blood-brother paper cut here, or a gaping wound? Because I’ve had enough gaping wounds today, thank you.”

  “The cut itself will be relatively small,” Nathaniel assured me. “But combining our magic will feel…intimate.”

  Now I was the uncertain one. “You mean, I’ll feel you inside me? And you’ll be able to feel me?”

  Nathaniel nodded. “I understand if such a thing is reprehensible to you.”

  Reprehensible? Not exactly. More like a betrayal. Because there was only one man I’d ever been intimate with, and mingling anything with Nathaniel felt a lot like I was spitting on Gabriel’s grave.

  But if I didn’t do this, then everyone in this hospital was nothing but a buffet for the vampire horde.

  I held out my hand to Nathaniel.

  4

  NATHANIEL TOOK MY HAND IN HIS. HIS SKIN WAS SO much warmer than mine. Angels are born of the sun, and the light of the sun beats within them. I had the heartstone of an angel, but my light would always be tempered by my humanity. I would never really be one of them.

  He turned my hand over, drew his sword. “It will only hurt for a moment.”

  “I’ve had worse than a slice from a sharp blade,” I said.

  All the monsters I’d fought flickered in my memory for a moment, and then Nathaniel cut my palm open with the sword. I flinched, because it’s natural to flinch when you see your flesh rent open, but I didn’t make a noise.

  Nathaniel repeated the same action on his own palm. He held the bloodied hand up for me to match. I pressed my wound against his and felt the tingling of magic, still banked.

  He pulled me close, wrapped his other arm around my waist. I was hyperaware of all the places where our bodies touched, of the warmth of his breath on my hair. The air crackled with energy.

  “Hold tight,” he murmured.

  The glass of a nearby window exploded outward. Nathaniel shot through the opening and into the sky. We hovered above the roofs of the giant complex that composed the hospital.

  Nathaniel leaned close to my ear. “I want you to push your power up and out, into the place where our blood touches. I will direct the spell. Now.”

  I closed my eyes, found the place inside me where my ability lay quietly waiting for me, and I woke it up. I didn’t try to control or direct it anywhere except toward Nathaniel. The power roared forth, an unrestrained howl. As the heart of my magic met Nathaniel’s, my eyes flew open and met his.

  Magic scorched the air.

  Bitter wind cut through our clothes but I barely felt it. All I could feel was Nathaniel. It was like he was running wild in my blood, burning me from the inside out.

  I knew his power, and his heart. I felt his struggle to direct the spell, to corral this wild surge that neither of us had expected.

  I felt the confusion that roiled inside him, the passion for me that he had proclaimed but that I had always denied.

  I don’t know what I revealed to him, but he looked as shocked as I felt.

  We were locked together by magic and surprise, by a spell that had gone out of control almost as soon as it had been cast. The power poured forth from us, its strength almost beyond comprehension. It settled beneath us, draping all the innocents below in a protective veil. I knew that no vampire or demon would be able to harm the sleeping inmates of the hospital.

  Our magic mingled and swirled, and when he put his mouth on mine it didn’t seem like a choice but an inevitability.

  Part of me wanted to pull away. Part of me thought that it was far too soon for me to kiss some man who was not Gabriel.

  The rest of me welcomed the heat, the burn, the wild play of magic in my blood, his mouth ravenous and devouring, our bodies pressed so tight that there was no air between us.

  I don’t know what would have happened if someone hadn’t started shooting at us.

  Nathaniel tore his mouth away, and the shock of his retreat brought the flow of magic to a grinding halt. I could still feel the remnants of him inside me.

  A bullet whizzed past, close enough for me to feel the disrupted current of air that trailed behind it. I tried to look around, to see who was shooting, but Nathaniel held me tight and flew upward.

  I was still full-body pressed against him, and this is not the best position for flying. I released his bloodied hand and put my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist. This made other, more intimate parts of us press together. I tried not to think about what was touching and focused instead on the fact that our lives were in danger. But the lingering remnants of the spell remained, and I could tell that Nathaniel was having trouble concentrating on the situation at hand as well.

  “Do not move around,” he said through gritted teeth. “And keep a tight hold. I am going to have to let go in order to blast them with nightfire.”

  “Who is it?” I said, still trying to crane around and see over Nathaniel’s shoulder at the creatures chasing us.

  “Bryson,” Nathaniel said. “And at least two other Agents with weapons.”

  “Bryson,” I repeated. How had he found me? Was he chasing me at Sokolov’s request or for his own reasons?

  The super Agent hated me, and with good reason. I’d captured him spying on my property and Nathaniel had tortured him at my behest. But why was Bryson chasing after me and trying to kill me now? Didn’t the Agency care that the city was under siege?

  Nathaniel spun in the air, blasted nightfire at the Agents, then turned back to fly away from them. I heard one of the Agents cry out. I really wished I had my wings back. I was useless like this.

  Nathaniel dipped and swerved, careening around buildings and into alleys in an attempt to shake off the Agents. But the staccato rhythm of gunfire chased us as we headed south. All I could see from my position was Nathaniel’s strained face. I kept my grip tight and tried not to distract him while he was trying to save our lives.

  And then the unbelievable, the unthinkable, happened. I couldn’t see Bryson and his cohorts behind us. I was concentrating too hard on keeping a close grip on Nathaniel. But the sound of the gunfire changed, and I’ve seen enough movies to know what an automatic weapon sounds like.

  Nathaniel cried out in pain, a sound I’d never heard from him before. I glimpsed Bryson’s malicious, triumphant face. Then I heard the horrible sound of tearing flesh, felt the hot stickiness of Nathaniel’s blood on my hands.

  It happened so fast that I hardly knew what was occurring until we were falling out of the sky. The shock of it caused my grip to loosen and then I was alone, in the air.

  “Madeline!” Nathaniel cried. His hands reached for me, missed. I glimpsed the terror on his face as I plummeted toward the earth.

  This was how it was going to end. I was going to be smashed on the ground like a bug. Nathaniel fell toward me, spinning this way and that, a gruesome rain of scarlet spraying from his body. I saw his left wing flap as he tried to right himself, saw him reach for me.

  Our fingertips brushed together, slipped apart. Then he grabbed my wrist, his face strained, the muscles of his neck bulging with effort as he struggled to halt our descent.

  That was when I noticed his right wing hung at an unnatural angle, and that it wasn’t moving.

  Nathaniel managed to slow us down enough that our brains wouldn’t splatter all over the sidewalk, but we were still going to hit the ground with more force than the human body could take.

  Inside my belly, a tiny pair of wings fluttered in distress.

  Nathaniel jerked my hand, grabbed my waist with his arm and managed to turn over in midair. We were locked together like a pair of lovers, lying prone as we fell. Nathaniel’s face was grim.

  A second later we crashed to the ground. Nathaniel’s body cradled me, protected me from the worst of it, but I still felt the impact reverberate in my skull. I saw st
ars for a moment. When my vision cleared, Nathaniel’s eyes were closed. He was paler than death.

  I touched his cheek. “Nathaniel?”

  He opened his eyes, and they were full of pain. His voice rasped out, “I need you to move off me, very slowly.”

  I slid carefully to one side. I could tell that Nathaniel was trying not to cry out again. In the process of moving I noticed a twinge in my shoulder. I sat up on the concrete and put my fingers to the hole in my coat. They came away bloody.

  “Bryson hit you,” Nathaniel said. He watched me from his position on the ground. He hadn’t moved a centimeter since we landed.

  “I think the bullet just skimmed me. I didn’t feel it,” I said, watching Nathaniel in growing dread. “Nathaniel, did you break your back?”

  “Yes,” he said, and he sounded so strained. “I am attempting to mend it. But my powers are quite depleted at the moment, as, I imagine, are yours.”

  It seemed like it had happened hours before, not minutes. The mention of the protective spell we’d put over the hospital—and what had come after—made me blush.

  “Nathaniel,” I began, but he shook his head at me.

  “If you have any magic to give now, you must use it to get away,” he said. “I do not know what became of the Agents or why they halted their pursuit. They may return to complete the task they have begun. But more important, there are vampires are approaching.”

  “How do you know?” I asked, glancing around.

  We were on the sidewalk in front of McCormick Place, next to the traffic circle and between the south and west wings of the complex. It looked like a ghost town. There was no traffic on King Drive—no taxis, no buses, no bikes. Nobody roamed through the pedestrian bridge that connected the two buildings. Everywhere was the detritus of people abandoning the area in haste. It was like we were the last two souls on the planet.

  “I can hear them,” Nathaniel said. He’d closed his eyes again. “Madeline, you must go.”

  “And leave you here to die?” I said.

  “I will have fulfilled my pact with Lord Lucifer. I have protected you from harm, and now I can die with honor.”

  “Are you out of your effing mind?” I said, grabbing his hand. “I am not going to leave you here.”