Black City (A BLACK WINGS NOVEL)

by Christina Henry

  Her eyes widened. Apparently my reputation as a loose cannon was potent enough that she took my threat seriously.

  “Lucifer would kill you if you caused the death of his child,” she said.

  “And he’ll kill you if you cause the death of mine,” I said, finally coming around to the point. I wanted to make sure that she knew I was not to be trifled with. “I don’t see you as a threat. But you obviously see me as one. So don’t get any ideas about trying to take me or my kid out just so you can be number one with Lucifer.”

  “No one except my child will be Lucifer’s heir,” Evangeline hissed.

  “That’s not up to you,” I said. “But I’ll tell you this—I’ve already killed two of Lucifer’s children, and I’m still up and walking around. Don’t think I’ll hesitate to take out your little monster if I have to. If you try to harm my child, then you will not live to see another dawn.”

  We stood there, face-to-face under the blazing sun in a desert of white sand, and took each other’s measure. Evangeline blinked first.

  “You will not threaten me,” she said haughtily, drawing her bravado around her like a cloak. “I will be Lucifer’s queen.”

  “Remember what I said.”

  “You—”

  “Remember what I said,” I repeated.

  Maybe I was going a little dark side.

  “Now, get walking,” I said, and pointed west, toward the horizon.

  Evangeline’s lips parted. “Walk?”

  I nodded. “You don’t think we can just fly out of here, do you? We’ve got to earn it. I’m taking a soul from the other side of the Door.”

  “Surely you have the ability to…”

  “Do you want to stay? Because that will make my life a lot less complicated, and I’m very big on anything that will make my life easier right now,” I said.

  “I cannot believe that you expect me to pay the price for our return,” she muttered.

  “I’m not paying it,” I said. “You want to live again, you pony up. I’m just the delivery girl.”

  It was helpful to consider myself that way, to think that I was simply doing the same duty I had always done as an Agent, except in reverse. It was easier than thinking about the fact that I was doing something that undid the order of the universe just so Lucifer could exert his will.

  When I thought about it that way, my bitterness was like chalk in my mouth. Of course I’d never had a real option to leave Evangeline behind, no matter what I’d said. If I’d come home without her, Lucifer would have simply ordered me back as Hound, and I would have been unable to resist. I’d thought it would be better to do it of my own free will, but it was almost worse. I couldn’t fall back on the excuse that I’d been nothing but a puppet for Lucifer.

  Evangeline reluctantly trudged forward. She looked like a pouty child who was told that she couldn’t have a lollipop.

  There was something of the child about Evangeline still, I mused. She had been very young when she’d fallen in love with Lucifer, and she had destroyed her whole village and anyone who crossed her in order to get to him. She had been taken from Lucifer by a rival faction of fallen angels, and then been rescued by Michael and hidden away.

  In a sense she had never really grown up. And I knew from experience that when Evangeline wanted something, she would lay waste to anything in her path to get it. When she’d wanted her vengeance on Ariell, the angel who had stolen her from Lucifer, she had possessed me. She’d lost her mind completely when I’d refused to let her work her will through my body, and then she’d been killed by Ramuell and ended up here.

  I was pretty sure that she was right on the edge of insanity. I was also sure that whatever plans Lucifer had for the future did not include having a mad queen on the throne beside him.

  He wanted the baby. Just as he wanted my baby.

  My son gave a little flutter underneath my belly button. I wished I could be as other mothers were, the ones who lay on their sofas and dreamed of their child’s face, their child’s future. When I looked into my child’s future I saw a life of turmoil and pain.

  And love, a little voice whispered from the back of my head, and it sounded a lot like Beezle.

  Yes, I would love this baby. I already did, with a fury and a power I had not expected. I would do anything for my son.

  And so would Evangeline. I glanced at her as she padded along in the sand in bare feet, her hair waving about in wild Medusa springs. She was nuts. She would kill me in an instant if she thought she could get away with it, because it was pretty clear that she was jealous of my standing with Lucifer. I’d like to tell her she was welcome to him if she would just keep him away from me, but I didn’t think she would believe me.

  Still, she was a mother, too. And that made me feel a little sorry for her. Her first two children had been taken by duty and Death, made to serve as soul collectors in Lucifer’s stead.

  I don’t know whether I could bear it if my child were taken from me. Her instability was easier to understand in that light.

  We walked on, two mothers-to-be, without food or water or shade or shelter. The horizon looked farther away with every step.

  “How much more?” she asked through parched lips.

  “We’ll know,” I said. I had long since abandoned my favorite sweater and rolled my shirtsleeves to my shoulders. I was getting a sunburn.

  Something shimmered in front of us. I stopped, squinted at the thing that must be an illusion.

  “Do you see that?” I asked.

  Evangeline shaded her eyes. “Something silver? Water?”

  “Something silver,” I breathed. “Not water. A portal.”

  We walked faster. I stumbled over my own feet in the sand. Evangeline went ahead of me, her gown flowing behind her. Her crazy cackle trailed in the wind as she laughed and laughed harder the closer she got to the portal.

  I ran, trying to catch up with her, but I was wearing heavy boots and lugging a sword that kept banging around. I would have flown, but ever since I’d landed I’d felt the air pressing on me in a way that told me flying would be impossible here.

  I think that she thought she would be able to dive through the portal and close it on the other side, leaving me there. She found out soon enough that wouldn’t happen.

  She launched herself at the portal and bounced off it as if it were a brick wall. She staggered backward, her hands thrown wide.

  “What is this?” she screeched. “Why have I crossed this desert if not to escape?”

  “Chill,” I said, coming up behind her, panting. “Keep the lid on the crazy for a second, will you?”

  “I swear by all the gods, granddaughter, if you have made me suffer for no reason…”

  “You’ll what?” I said. “Talk me to death? You have no power, Evangeline. Here you are nothing more than a spirit, and you cannot pass through that portal without me. And without paying the price.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “I thought I just paid the price.”

  “You thought a walk through the desert was the price?” I asked. “No way. You’re asking to be restored to the living. The only way you pay is in blood.”

  Evangeline covered her belly protectively. “You will not take my child from me.”

  “I am not taking anything,” I said impatiently, although it was a possibility I had already considered. The universe might let Evangeline through that portal—if she gave her baby’s life in return. “It’s not up to me.”

  I held out my hand to her. She gazed at it fearfully, as if I were a snake about to strike.

  “If you want to return, you have to come with me. And you have to agree to the price that is asked of you,” I said. “Otherwise, you stay.”

  After a long pause, she took my hand. Her fingers were cold, and I was seized by the sudden impulse to comfort her.

  Then I remembered that she had laughed like a maniac when Ramuell had torn my heart out, and the impulse passed.

  We approached the portal, which looked
like a long silver mirror hanging without wall or wire above the sand. I stretched my other hand toward it, and I passed through. Evangeline flowed in behind me.

  Unlike every other portal I’d experienced, this one did not immediately suck us into a vacuum and send us hurtling through space and time. Instead we were floating in a kind of misty netherworld, surrounded by streams of white smoke.

  One of the puffs of smoke curled into a face and gazed at me with empty eyes. I realized that what I thought was smoke were ghosts, the ghosts of all those who had tried to pass through here and been unable or unwilling to pay the price.

  The ghosts wound around us. They seemed fairly harmless to me, like kittens. But Evangeline started to struggle, to try to shake them off her.

  “Quit it,” I said. “If you keep that up, I’ll lose you.”

  “Make them leave,” she said, her voice trembling. “They want my baby.”

  I frowned at her. “I don’t think so. They’re just curious.”

  “They want me to pay,” she said. “Can’t you hear them whispering?”

  I shook my head. “No. I can’t.”

  “They are in my head,” she said, her green eyes wide with terror. “They are telling me of all the sins I have done.”

  It was like Evangeline was trapped in her own personal Maze while I was drifting along in a stream of cotton candy. There was nothing I could do now. I had fulfilled Lucifer’s charge to me, and fetched Evangeline from the dead. Now it was up to her whether she would pass into the land of the living again.

  She began to thrash, and it was harder for me to hold on to her. I knew if I released her now, she would end up in the netherworld forever. That wasn’t really a problem for me, but Lucifer might think I’d left her there on purpose.

  I grabbed onto her other shoulder with my left hand while keeping a good grip on her fingers with my right. She couldn’t even see me now. Her gaze was somewhere else, far inward.

  Then she nodded. And then she screamed, and we were falling, rushing through the air like we’d been dropped from the top of the tallest building in the world. There was no chance for me to slow us down. Her shoulder slipped out of my grasp, and there was something wet and sticky on my fingers. I white-knuckled her hand, and hoped that we would make it. There wasn’t much else I could do.

  The ground appeared out of nowhere, and all the breath left my body. Evangeline’s hand was still in mine, and it was colder than death. I sat up slowly, realizing I was in my own backyard, and that it was night. I don’t know how long I had been gone, but all of the snow had melted.

  “Thanks, universe,” I muttered. I didn’t really want to have to stash Evangeline until Lucifer felt like coming to pick her up.

  I looked over at Evangeline. Her eyes were closed. Now I knew why I’d lost my grip on her shoulder, and why my fingers were all sticky.

  Evangeline’s right arm was gone, cut as cleanly as if by an ax, and she was bleeding to death on my lawn.

  “Gods above and below,” I swore.

  The back door slammed open. Nathaniel stood silhouetted in the doorway.

  “Madeline,” he said, his voice full of relief. “You have been gone for three days. I thought you would never return.”

  “Never mind that,” I said urgently. “I need you to help me with Evangeline. She’s bleeding to death.”

  I have to give Nathaniel credit. He didn’t stand around asking about the whys and wherefores. He rushed to my side, and seemed to know what I wanted immediately.

  His fingers twined around mine, and we each put our other hand over the gaping hole where Evangeline’s arm used to be.

  Our magic, Nathaniel’s and mine, lit up the night like a searchlight. It took a long time to close the wound. There was a lot of damage.

  After a while it was done. Evangeline was still breathing, although it didn’t sound like she was restful. I lifted her right eyelid to check her pupils and gasped.

  “What?” Nathaniel said.

  “Look,” I said.

  There was no eye underneath, just a black hole where the orb used to be. Nathaniel checked the other socket. I watched expectantly.

  “Empty,” he said.

  I put my hand over Evangeline’s belly, wondering whether her child had survived the passage. Beneath my hand there was movement, but it wasn’t natural. It felt like she was carrying a litter of snakes. I yanked my palm away, rubbing it on my pants leg.

  “Both her eyes and her arm,” I said.

  “It seems a small price to pay for returning from the dead,” Nathaniel said.

  “And still, I wonder how happy she’ll be about paying it once she wakes up and realizes she can’t see,” I said.

  Nathaniel lay down in the grass. He pulled me to him so I could rest my head on his chest.

  “It’s done,” I said. Evangeline’s happiness with her choice was not of any concern to me. My eyes closed. I felt an almost overwhelming urge to sleep right there. “Lucifer, she’s here.”

  I drifted into a doze, woke when I felt him beside her, kneeling in the grass, lifting her away. His voice was nothing but a whisper on the wind—Thank you, granddaughter.

  Nathaniel and I both slept right there in the yard. When I opened my eyes again all that remained of Evangeline was a bloodstain in the grass. It was still very dark out, not even close to the dawn yet.

  I sat up, rubbing my eyes, and stretched. I was stiff all over. I wanted a proper sleep in a proper bed after a very hot shower with lots of soap. There was sand in my eyes, sand in my clothes, sand in my socks. I still had Evangeline’s blood on my hands.

  Nathaniel opened his eyes. They glittered in the starlight, the deep blue of the sapphires. He was beautiful to me in that moment, a creature of another world, black-haired and white-winged, bathed in the night.

  I lowered my head to kiss him, drawn by a force I could not resist.

  He smiled, and I realized at the last second that it was not his smile. Something was wrong.

  His hands latched on my neck and he pushed me to the ground, his weight on top of me, suffocating me.

  I tried to say his name, to pry his hands from my neck. I put my hands over his, fought for consciousness, pushed power through the connection between us.

  I didn’t find Nathaniel’s magic welcoming me as I had before. There was someone else inside him, someone else at the controls.

  My life was fading fast. My baby beat its wings against my belly. I found the spark of the Morningstar inside me, and gave one tremendous heave, pushing all of that power into Nathaniel. The source of his power, that gift from Puck, rose up to meet me. Together we chased the thing that was inside Nathaniel out.

  There was an audible pop, and then Nathaniel released my neck. I coughed, breathing great lungfuls of air. Nathaniel looked horrified.

  “Madeline, I am so—”

  “Don’t apologize,” I said, and jerked my thumb at the silvery apparition floating in the air. “It was her fault. You’re some piece of work—you know that?”

  Amarantha smirked at me. “I may have failed in this instance, but you will never know when I will strike again.”

  I stood up, rubbing my throat. “Whose magic did you steal to be able to do that?”

  “I stole nothing,” Amarantha said, miffed. “Your useless brother left his cupboard of toys behind when he was beheaded. There are many useful things in there.”

  Greenwitch’s magic. She’d been an exceptional witch, and since Antares had no magic of his own she had bequeathed him a collection of magical objects to help him. I’d noticed the cupboard in the cave in the Forbidden Lands where I’d killed Antares, but once the mountain came down on the cavern I’d assumed nothing could survive.

  Somehow Amarantha had ferreted out Antares’ goodies. Before, she’d just been an annoying ghost. A closetful of magic suddenly made her a lot more dangerous. That meant I would have to find her stash and destroy it before she could do any more damage to me and mine.

  Amara
ntha smiled like she knew what I was thinking. “You will never discover it, Agent. You will be forever looking over your shoulder for me.”

  She rose up, her tinkling-bell laugh just as irritating in death as it had been in life. She threw her arms wide. “But first, a gift for you.”

  The vampires came slithering over the fence from the alley, dozens of them. Behind them clambered humans with blank eyes, and I realized that Amarantha had somehow ensnared these humans with other ghosts, just as she had possessed Nathaniel. It was a crafty move, since she knew that I wouldn’t deliberately harm a bunch of innocents. And because it severely limited my brand of blast-and-burn magic.

  “I guess we know who was working with Therion,” I muttered, drawing my sword. Nathaniel and I moved so that we were back-to-back. “Don’t hurt the humans. They’re not responsible for what they do.”

  The vampires surrounded us, snarling. They descended on us, and so commenced the hacking and the slashing.

  The vampires were hopelessly outmatched. I’m not sure why they bothered, really. The hardest part for me was making sure that I didn’t accidentally behead any humans in the close quarters.

  “Why are we bothering to engage them?” Nathaniel said as he sent a blast of nightfire directly into the chest of nearby vamp. “There is no need. We could fly away.”

  “Yeah, but then the vampires would eat the neighbors,” I said. “And I think they just got home after the last vampire crisis.”

  The vampires were dispatched fairly quickly. The humans were another problem. They surrounded us with their blank and staring eyes, their hands outstretched.

  “This is a lot like being in a George Romero movie,” I said. “Except that I don’t have a shotgun.”

  We both lifted off from the ground at the same time, floating above the yard. The possessed humans milled around for a minute, confused.

  “Now, where did that bitch Amarantha go?” I said.

  “Here,” J.B.’s voice said behind me.

  18

  AMARANTHA GLARED AT ME THROUGH J.B.’S EYES. SHE pointed her finger at me and shot a blast of red light at me. I dodged it narrowly and pointed my sword at her.