Black City (A BLACK WINGS NOVEL)

by Christina Henry

  The cave was gradually getting brighter, the walls shot through with twinkling veins of luminescence. It was a tremendous relief to be out of the suffocating dark.

  It was less of a relief when we came to the place where the cave was split.

  “Great,” I said, looking at the two identical paths. “How are we supposed to know which way they went?”

  Jude sniffed the air. His nose wasn’t quite as good when he was in human form, but it was still better than an ordinary person’s.

  “Samiel went this way,” he said, pointing toward the right-hand cave. He then pointed to the other tunnel. “Chloe and some kind of reptile-mammalian thing went that way.”

  “Reptile-mammalian thing?” Beezle said.

  “I don’t know what it is, but that’s what it smells like,” Jude said.

  “I don’t want to meet anything that fell off two branches of the evolutionary tree,” Beezle said. “Let’s go away from the multispecies monster.”

  I was less worried about the reptile-mammalian thing than I was about the fact that Samiel and Chloe had entered different passages.

  “We have two choices,” I said. “We can all stay together and go after Chloe, then come back here to try and find Samiel after we retrieve her.”

  “And the second option is that we divide forces,” Nathaniel said. “The answer is no.”

  “I second that,” J.B. said.

  “It’s impractical for us to move like one big amoeba and leave Samiel alone,” I said.

  “I’ll go after Samiel,” Jude said. “And then I’ll find you. I can follow your scent easily enough.”

  “Thank you,” I said, keeping my eyes firmly on his face. His clothes were somewhere in the woods. “I’m going after Chloe. You can go with him or go with me,” I said to the other two, and I started jogging down the tunnel on the left side.

  “I don’t think it’s good for you to be friends with Jude,” Beezle said. “He enables your bad decisions.”

  “No,” I said. “Jude trusts me, which is more than I can say for anyone else.”

  “I trust you,” J.B said, running up on my left.

  “You just don’t think I can do anything without you there to keep me safe. And that’s what Nathaniel thinks, too,” I said, as the angel silently joined us. He ignored my jibe. “Nothing to say?”

  “A wise man knows when to keep his own counsel,” Nathaniel said.

  “And you know that nothing you say will stop her, anyway,” Beezle said. “Wait—I just realized we went down the tunnel of the freaky combination animal thing. I don’t want to go down this tunnel. I want to go with Jude.”

  “Too late,” I said with a lightness I did not feel. The monster could be eating Chloe right now. “Look at it this way. You’ll be able to see something very few have ever seen.”

  “That’s because they’re not alive to tell us about it,” Beezle muttered. “You know, I’m not much of a let’s-make-discoveries-for-science gargoyle. I’m more of a watching-science-on-TV-while-eating-pan-fried-noodles gargoyle.”

  The cave was lit by the same trails of light that were in the main passage. After a while I noticed that the walls were also covered in some kind of white fluid, and that my boots were no longer crunching over rock. The ground was covered in the same goop.

  Beezle noticed it the same time I did. “Once you start seeing viscous liquid, it’s time to turn around before you get put inside a cocoon and eaten at a later date.”

  “Should we leave Chloe inside a cocoon to be eaten at a later date?” I asked. I slowed my steps, moving more cautiously now that there were obvious signs of the creature.

  Beezle muttered something that sounded like, “Better her than me, and she eats all the pancakes, anyway.”

  “All the more reason to get her back,” I said. “She’s the only person who can give you a run for your money at the dining room table. And Samiel would be heartbroken if anything happened to her.”

  “Fine,” Beezle said. “But when we’re encased in goo, I’m definitely saying I told you so.”

  Nathaniel stopped, holding up his hand. “Shh.”

  He tilted his head slightly, listening. “We are nearly upon it,” he said softly. “I can hear it moving.”

  “Chloe?” I asked, afraid to hope.

  “She is still alive,” he said. “I cannot vouch for her condition.”

  “I can’t hear anything,” J.B. said.

  “Nathaniel can,” I said, moving as carefully and quietly as I could. Even when trying to be silent I sounded like a lumbering bear next to the other two. Nathaniel’s footfalls were so light I had to check to make sure he wasn’t floating above the ground.

  “When did he get bat ears?” J.B. asked.

  “It’s a long story,” I said.

  J.B. looked between me and Nathaniel. “Yeah, I bet.”

  The tunnel appeared to continue on straight ahead of us for hundreds of feet.

  “Where is it?” I asked.

  Nathaniel shook his head. “It is nearby. With every step we take, its movements become louder.”

  We walked a little farther. Nathaniel was very insistent that he could hear the creature, but there were no corridors or rooms off the main passage.

  I stopped in the middle of the cave, looking all around. “Something isn’t right here.”

  “You mean besides the fact that I’m hungry and there’s no food to be found?” Beezle said.

  “Yes,” I said. “Nathaniel can hear the creature, but we can’t see it, and there’s nothing ahead of us but more tunnel. So there’s got to be some kind of entrance to another room or cavern that we can’t see. Beezle, did you lose your abilities when we entered the cave, too?”

  “Yup,” Beezle said. “I’m just like a regular person now, no special gargoyle X-ray powers.”

  “You’ll never be just like a regular person,” J.B. said.

  “That doesn’t sound like a compliment,” Beezle said.

  “I wouldn’t take it as such,” J.B. said.

  I ignored their byplay and reached toward the wall. I had a suspicion and I wanted to see whether it was valid. Nathaniel grabbed my wrist.

  “Do not touch that,” he said. “You do not know what kind of effect it may have on a human.”

  I shook my head at him. “I’m not sure it’s there at all.”

  Nathaniel narrowed his eyes at the substance coating the cave. “You think it’s an illusion?”

  I nodded, and shook off his hand. I placed my palm on the wall of the cavern.

  For a moment it seemed that my hand would become trapped in the fluid, which had the substance of craft glue. Then I put some will and some force behind it, and my hand passed easily through the wall, and the rest of me with it.

  Nathaniel grabbed my other hand before I disappeared, and J.B. lunged for Nathaniel. All four of us slipped easily through the wall, which wasn’t really there at all.

  I wished we had stayed put.

  “So that’s a reptile-mammalian thing,” Beezle said. “It’s certainly…large.”

  We were in a massive cavern, similar to the one where the nephilim had been imprisoned in the Forbidden Lands. At the far end of the cavern, blessedly away from us, was a gigantic creature coiled in a ball, sleeping. It had roughly the body shape of a lizard, the diamond-shaped head of a snake, and its body was covered in shaggy fur like a woolly mammoth.

  Between us and the monster were piles of bones. Piles and piles and piles of bones, stacked higher than I would have thought possible.

  “How long has that thing been here?” I breathed.

  “It must have eaten everything that’s ever come through the passage for thousands of years,” Beezle said.

  “Where’s Chloe?” J.B. said, squinting. “Are those bones?”

  “I’m going to be so happy when you get your glasses back,” I said.

  “There,” Nathaniel said, pointing toward the ceiling.

  Three human-shaped cocoons hung there,
suspended by thin strands of webbing. All three cocoons were wiggling, indicating that the person inside was still alive and trying to get out.

  “I told you that once there was viscous fluid, there would be a cocoon,” Beezle said triumphantly. “Although I’ll tell you that I don’t want to know where it gets the thread for the cocoons from. That thing is already weird enough as it is.”

  “Where did the other two come from?” I asked.

  “It’s Jude and Samiel,” Nathaniel said. “Can’t you hear Jude?”

  Now that he mentioned it, I could. The wolf’s voice was muffled by the webbing, but it was definitely him.

  Chloe, Samiel and Jude were directly above the sleeping whatever-it-was. The monster didn’t seem to have been disturbed by our presence or our whispers, but that couldn’t possibly last.

  “Well, at least we’re all together again,” I said. “I think the only option is for the two of you to fly up and cut them down. Then bring them back here and I’ll cut the cocoon off so we can get out of here.”

  They nodded, and I bit my lip as I watched them fly away from me. I wanted my wings back. I was tired of watching everyone else do things I ought to be doing. I was tired of being carted around like a child when I could have been flying.

  J.B. and Nathaniel had a quick, quiet conference as they reached the cocoons. Beneath them, the monster shifted in its sleep, grunting and snorting, and we all went still.

  The creature didn’t seem like it was waking, so J.B. positioned himself next to one of the cocoons. Nathaniel cut the thread with his sword and J.B. caught the person easily. I saw his mouth move, reassuring whoever it was, and he flew toward me.

  Nathaniel was right behind him. He stopped only for a moment to whisper something to the person who remained.

  J.B. landed just ahead of Nathaniel. “It’s Samiel,” he said, laying my cocooned brother-in-law on the ground. Samiel was contorting inside the web.

  Nathaniel put another person next to him. “Jude,” he said briefly, and went back for Chloe.

  I bent close to Samiel. “Samiel, you have to lie still for a minute. I’m going to cut you out, and I don’t want to cut you.”

  He stopped moving. I placed the blade at his shoulder and carefully used the tip to lift away the tightly wound thread. Then I sliced through on a diagonal from his shoulder to his hip, and hoped I missed all the major arteries.

  Once I’d loosened the thread, Samiel burst out of the cocoon like the Hulk bursting out of his clothing. He looked wildly around, and J.B. grabbed Samiel before he could go tearing through the cavern. He made Samiel look at his face.

  “Nathaniel’s getting Chloe,” J.B. said.

  I repeated the procedure with Jude, who looked very annoyed once he emerged.

  “Never even heard it coming,” Jude said. “I think it only makes noise if it wants to.”

  “Uh, yeah, I think so,” Beezle said, and pointed.

  We all turned. Nathaniel was hanging in midair, his wings flapping just enough to keep him there. He held Chloe in his arms, and she was deathly still. Very likely she had fainted inside the cocoon, which was a mercy given her intense claustrophobia.

  The reptile-mammal thing had silently risen from its sleep and drawn its head level with Nathaniel. It watched the angel and his cargo with orange-yellow eyes, the pupils slit like a snake’s. Its mouth hung open, full of shiny fangs. Those fangs were only a few feet away from Nathaniel and Chloe. The monster and Nathaniel were both frozen in space, staring each other down. It was almost as if they were silently communicating.

  “Get out,” I said to the others.

  “Don’t have to tell me twice,” Beezle said, lifting off from my shoulder.

  “No,” J.B. said, his voice strained as he struggled to hold Samiel in place. Samiel had gone wild as soon as he’d seen Nathaniel and Chloe so close to the monster’s head. “We all stay together.”

  “Yeah,” Jude said. “Whatever you do, we’re in for it, too.”

  “I was going to distract the monster so that Nathaniel and Chloe could get away, and then I was going to run down the passage,” I said.

  “We’re not trying to kill it?” Beezle asked, hovering in the air next to me.

  “I’m not going to try to kill anything that big or that old without magic,” I said. “Besides, I don’t need it to be dead. I just need for us to get away.”

  “Hey!” I shouted. “Hey, over here!”

  Jude and J.B. shouted as well. Jude even picked up a heavy bone that looked like a human femur and tossed it in the direction of the creature.

  Neither the monster nor Nathaniel moved. I was again struck by the sense that they were somehow communicating. Or that Nathaniel was being…

  “Hypnotized,” I said.

  “Non sequitur,” Beezle said. “We’re trying to distract the monster here.”

  “We can’t distract it, because the monster is trying to hypnotize Nathaniel,” I said.

  Samiel broke free of J.B.’s grasp, which was inevitable. Samiel was amazingly strong, stronger than most supernaturals.

  However, Jude was amazingly fast and grabbed Samiel’s ankle, pulling him back to the ground as Samiel tried to fly to Chloe.

  Jude punched him in the face.

  “Quit it,” Jude growled. “Do you want to get her back, or do you want her to be eaten?”

  I want her back, Samiel said, and then he swung at Jude. The wolf was more than prepared, and grabbed Samiel’s fist.

  “Then stop and think,” Jude said. “Or at least do what Maddy thinks.”

  What the hell does she know? Samiel signed. She makes it up as she goes along, and the person she loved got stabbed to death. I don’t think Maddy is the best person to decide how to save Chloe.

  I turned away from them. I didn’t want to see what else Samiel might say, what other truths he might reveal in the heat of anger. It wasn’t the time for hurt feelings. But it did hurt. I’d always thought Samiel loved me unconditionally, that he didn’t blame me for Gabriel’s death. I guess it just proved that, as everyone kept telling me, I needed to stop taking people at face value. I was the only person I knew who wasn’t any good at deception.

  While all this was happening Nathaniel and the monster remained locked in their silent communion.

  “Why is it taking so long?” I wondered aloud.

  “Nathaniel’s resisting,” Beezle said. “That’s pretty impressive, considering he’s got no magic right now.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “If he wasn’t resisting, then it would be over by now. And since the monster wasn’t responding to us, it must be unable to get out of the spell until its victim is hypnotized,” Beezle said.

  I looked at the monster, then at Nathaniel and Chloe, and I had an idea. “Are you willing to bet my life on that theory?”

  Beezle looked uncertain, an expression I’d hardly ever seen on his face. “Why? What are you going to do?”

  “J.B.,” I said. “Can you put me on top of the monster’s head?”

  14

  “NO, I CANNOT,” J.B. SAID.

  “Cannot or will not?”

  “It’s the same damn thing,” he said. “You’re crazy if you think I’m going to let you do whatever you’re thinking of doing.”

  “I want you to fly me up to the top of the monster’s head and drop me there, and then I’ll stab it through the eye,” I said.

  “And now that I know your plan, I am definitely not helping,” J.B. said.

  “I thought you weren’t going to kill it,” Beezle said.

  “That was when I thought it was distractible,” I said. “It’s not, so I’m going to kill it. Or at least injure it horribly enough that it won’t be able to chase after us. And if you don’t fly me up there, Jacob Benjamin Bennett, I will climb up to the top of the monster’s head from its tail, and you can stand there and watch me.”

  “She threw down the middle name,” Beezle said.

  “You’d do it, too, just
to piss me off,” J.B. said.

  “No one else has a better idea. You’ve got the wings; I’ve got the sword.”

  “It’s a goddamned freaking miracle you’ve survived this long,” J.B. said, and he scooped me up.

  “Keep Samiel here,” I said to Jude.

  “No problem,” he said. He had wrapped his arms around Samiel’s and was holding the furious angel still.

  “I think I’ll just stay here and keep score,” Beezle said.

  “You do that,” I said. “Everyone be ready to run.”

  J.B. held me close to him as we flew. I was tense in his arms, preparing for the moment when he dropped me. I wasn’t completely convinced that the monster would be able to ignore my presence once I landed on its head, and I wanted to be able to stab it and get out of there as quickly as possible.

  “Once you drop me, circle around and wait close to the ceiling,” I said.

  “Like I’m going to leave you there alone,” J.B. said. “Don’t be stupid.”

  “You don’t have a sword,” I said. “What are you going to do?”

  “Make sure you don’t get tossed into a wall when the creature goes berserk after you stab it,” J.B. said. “I agreed to this insane plan, but I am not leaving you alone there, so forget it.”

  We were above the monster long before I was ready. It hadn’t seemed to notice us flying directly toward it. As Beezle had noted, all of the creature’s energy was focused on Nathaniel.

  The angel hadn’t registered our presence, either. His face was red from the exertion of trying to resist the creature’s spell, but he was resisting. Now that we were close, I could see the spark of fury in his eyes.

  J.B. straightened so that it looked like we were standing in the air, and very gently lowered us toward the monster’s head. The creature’s fur was matted and filthy, and it smelled like it had been rolling in meat for the last hundred years.

  I have a sensitive stomach, and pregnancy did not help. My first deep breath of the monster made me gag.

  “If you puke on me, I’m going to drop you on the monster and leave you there,” J.B. said.

  “Your shirt already has blood on it,” I said, breathing shallowly and trying to suppress the urge to vomit. “What’s the difference?”