Black Heart

by Christina Henry

  “Humans do a very fine job of killing one another when magic is not involved,” I said.

  “They don’t usually slaughter each other in the streets and then eat each other’s faces off,” Beezle said. “So while there is human curiosity, there is also trepidation. A lot of supernatural creatures think it’s best to ease into things.”

  “Introduce themselves to a small group, hope that the response is positive?” I said.

  “Pretty much,” Beezle said. “There are anecdotal tales of wolves and fae coming out to their workplaces or their sports teams, things like that.”

  “And?” I asked.

  “Most responses have been positive,” Beezle said.

  “Most?”

  “There are bigots everywhere,” Beezle said sadly. “And they like to kill what they don’t understand.”

  “So you think I should continue to hide my wings,” I said.

  “For now,” Beezle said.

  I stopped on the sidewalk next to the Art of Pizza’s plaza. There was a rock music school next door, and a tiny parking lot. The restaurant was bright and bustling. Large glass windows fronted the building. I could see people picking up take-out orders, others gathered in groups in the informal seating area. Delivery drivers rushed in and out.

  “Beezle,” I said. “If I’m a folk hero, won’t people recognize me?”

  “Nah,” Beezle said. “You had really short hair in the first picture that Therion showed on the vampire broadcast.”

  “People are going to be fooled by the length of my hair?” I asked.

  “You were also covered in blood,” Beezle pointed out. “And you were wearing that stupid coat.”

  “That stupid coat keeps me warm,” I said. “Or it did. It got burned up, along with the rest of my stuff. What about the video of me destroying the vampires? I had long hair then, and no blood on me.”

  “But you have wings in that video,” Beezle said. “And they are covered up now. So people might think they recognize you, but they won’t be sure. It will be like an Angelina Jolie sighting.”

  “I don’t think it will be anything like an Angelina Jolie sighting,” I muttered, but I crossed the parking lot and entered the restaurant anyway. I couldn’t hide out from the world, and anyway I had nowhere to hide.

  I’d thought I’d just slide up to the counter, order a couple of slices to go and get out, like a regular person. But I’d forgotten that I had Beezle on my shoulder. All it took was one person noticing my gargoyle. A murmur rose in the restaurant as men and women pointed at him. My cheeks reddened as I stepped up to the counter.

  “One thin-crust mushroom and a sausage deep-dish to go,” I said to the short Latino guy working behind the counter.

  I have to give the guy credit. He didn’t even blink. Or maybe he was just so focused on getting through the order and to the next person that the presence of Beezle on my shoulder didn’t really register.

  It took only about a minute for him to get my slices and ring up the order, but it felt like an eternity. I could feel the stares of the curious burning into my back. Beezle seemed unaffected by the whole thing, adopting the attitude of a celebrity who knows he’s been identified but wants to pretend otherwise.

  I collected my change and the container holding the pizza and headed for the door. I pretended I had tunnel vision and focused only on the exit. Almost there. Almost . . .

  A young man a few inches taller than me wearing a Muse T-shirt and a pair of worn-out jeans slid in front of me just as I was about to push the door open. His blue eyes were alight with excitement.

  “Hey,” he said loudly. “Aren’t you Madeline Black?”

  11

  I DUCKED MY HEAD AND TRIED TO STEP AROUND HIM. “No, sorry; you must have mistaken me for someone else,” I mumbled.

  He put his fingers on my shoulder to stop me. “No, I think you are,” he insisted.

  My temper flared when he put his hand on me. I know he didn’t mean me any harm, and even if he did, it would be nothing for me to squash him like a bug. But nobody pushed me around. Not even an insignificant human.

  I let my power surge up, so that my eyes would change. Then I lifted my head so he could see it.

  “Get your mitts off me and get out of my way,” I said in a low voice.

  “Whoa, check out your eyes,” the guy said.

  “He doesn’t have enough brains for self-preservation,” Beezle said to me. “You ought to blast him just on principle.”

  “I thought we were against harming the innocent?” I said under my breath.

  “Some people are too stupid to live,” Beezle said.

  I looked up at the guy in my way, who was staring at me like he was hypnotized. “Move now or forever hold your peace.”

  “Jack, move,” another guy hissed. He was seated at the counter that ran along the front window, overlooking the parking lot. The counter seating was right next to the front door.

  Jack stepped out of the way, finally. I pushed open the door and went into the lot.

  “See if he’s following me,” I said to Beezle.

  Beezle twisted on my shoulder. “His friend is arguing with him. Jack’s collecting up his stuff to run after you.”

  “We’re going under a veil,” I said. “Stay still.”

  I pulled the veil over us just as Jack and his friend emerged into the parking lot. They both stood there blinking.

  “Did you see . . . ?” Jack asked.

  “No,” his friend said firmly. He grabbed his buddy’s shoulder and steered him back inside. Jack looked back several times, obviously hoping to see me.

  “No one was going to recognize me, huh?” I said. I walked back toward the six-way intersection to find a bench to sit on while we ate.

  “How was I to know that Jack Dabrowski would be in Art of Pizza at that very moment?” Beezle complained.

  “Wait—you knew who that guy was?” I said.

  “Of course I did,” Beezle said. “He’s got a blog that collects all the supernatural sightings in Chicago. He’s been doing it since before the vampire invasion. Once upon a time he was considered a crackpot who saw ghosts.”

  “And now he’s a viewed as a high priest, right? All the people who made fun of him know he was correct, that there really are things that go bump in the night.”

  “He’s the reigning authority on anything out of the ordinary,” Beezle said. “And he’s been a very vocal advocate of yours.”

  “I guess he wasn’t aware that I was supposed to be dead.”

  “Oh, he knew. He just didn’t believe it,” Beezle said.

  “Why? All the evidence indicated such. He didn’t have a personal relationship with me. Why would he think I wasn’t dead, and more importantly, why would he care?”

  “He wants you to take a leadership role in Chicago. Something high profile, like mayor.”

  I stared at Beezle. “Did you investigate him to see if he was an agent of Lucifer?”

  “He’s not,” Beezle said. “He just really, really thinks that you should use your powers for good. Be the human face of the supernatural world. People already like you. They already think you’re a hero because you wiped out the vampires. He might have a point.”

  “No, he doesn’t,” I said firmly. “I am not running for public office, or turning into some kind of mouthpiece for supernaturals. I might as well walk around wearing a T-shirt with a target painted on the front and back. All I’d be doing is making it easier for one of Titania’s men to assassinate me while I stood on a platform at a press conference.”

  “That’s true,” Beezle admitted. “Dabrowski isn’t exactly in full possession of the facts. He just thinks you did something heroic and therefore—”

  “I should be punished for it?” I asked.

  “I don’t think he views it as punishment,” Beezle said.

  I dropped the veil when I found a very weatherworn bench with a yellow “Your Ad Here” sign on the back rest. There was a boarded-up storefro
nt behind it with a cell-phone carrier name on the crooked sign. Every third or fourth business had been completely abandoned, and it wasn’t just a product of the bad economy. It seemed like a fair number of people hadn’t bothered to return to Chicago after the vampire devastation. I couldn’t say that I blamed them.

  Beezle flew off my shoulder and landed on the seat, rubbing his hands together in anticipation as I opened the take-out box.

  “You will use utensils,” I said, pulling a rubber-band-wrapped package with a fork, knife and napkin out of my pocket.

  “You’re using your hands,” Beezle whined as I removed my slice from the box.

  “I did not get deep-dish,” I pointed out.

  “Oh, fine,” Beezle grumbled. He climbed inside the container and started cutting into the crust. “Now tell me everything that happened to you.”

  I started with Alerian’s appearance on the beach. Beezle hadn’t been around for that. Then I told him about the Retrievers attacking the house, the portal that Nathaniel had made (prompted by Puck), my experiences on the other world, and Puck’s deception. I told him about Daharan and the need to pass through the land of the dead. I told him that I saw Gabriel again, although I didn’t fill in the details.

  “So, Puck wanted you to go to this other planet and get rid of the giant insects,” Beezle said when I was finished. His stomach was splattered with tomato sauce. I took the unused napkin and wiped him down like a child.

  “Yes,” I said. “Although I don’t know what Titania’s going to say when she finds out all the Cimice are gone.”

  “Where did they come from in the first place?” Beezle asked. “If Lucifer closed the ways in and out except for that one portal, how did the Cimice even manage to get there in the first place?”

  “Daharan said that if you had enough power, you could just manage to open a portal there. I assume Titania has enough power to do such a thing. Or maybe Lucifer just didn’t do a very good job of sealing the place up.”

  “Yes, but why?” Beezle asked. “It doesn’t make any sense. She would have to move the Cimice across the ocean to get them off that planet and into Chicago. Why not leave them on the world that they originally came from?”

  “Maybe she had a bone to pick with the fae that lived there,” I said. “It did seem like the Cimice were using their battles with the fae as some kind of training.”

  “It still seems inefficient to me,” Beezle said. “And why is Puck so concerned about it, anyway?”

  “He said that if Titania released the Cimice in Chicago, it would be tantamount to the Faerie Queen declaring war on Lucifer. Lucifer would be forced to respond. Puck says it doesn’t suit him to have the two of them at war. Yet.”

  “I don’t know about that, either,” Beezle said. “He hates Lucifer. And he can’t have enjoyed pretending to be less powerful than Titania for all of these years. What’s he playing at? What’s his long game?”

  “Don’t ask me,” I said. “I tried to think through all possible angles but I’m pretty sure I failed. I don’t have the right kind of brain for Puck-logic.”

  “Well, now I’m back so the rightful order of things can be restored. I’ll do the thinking; you do the smashing,” Beezle said.

  I collected up our garbage and stood. Someone touched my shoulder.

  I spun around, grabbing the person’s wrist and wrenching him to his knees before he realized what was happening. I twisted the arm around the person’s back.

  “Ow, ow, ow!” Jack Dabrowski said. “Dude, you’re breaking my arm.”

  I kept him in position, especially when I realized who it was. “What are you doing here? Did you follow me?”

  “How could I follow you?” Dabrowski protested. “You disappeared.”

  “Don’t parse the question,” I said, giving his arm a tug. He let out a little bark of pain. “You were looking for me.”

  Beezle landed on my shoulder and gave Dabrowski a good hard stare. “I told you he was too stupid to live.”

  “Are you . . . Are you going to kill me?” he asked. “I wasn’t doing anything.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true,” I said. “What happened to your friend?”

  “He left,” Dabrowski said. “He thought I should leave you alone.”

  “He was right,” I said. “How much of that conversation did you hear?”

  “None of it,” Dabrowski said quickly.

  “He’s lying,” Beezle said.

  “I know,” I said.

  “No, I’m not! I didn’t hear a thing. I just saw you sitting there and wanted to talk to you,” Dabrowski said.

  He tried to pull away from me, but no human was stronger than an angel, even one with blood as diluted as mine. I held him firmly in place. I had a strong suspicion that he’d not only heard my conversation with Beezle but had recorded it. He was an investigator, after all. And the last thing that I wanted was for my personal business to be broadcast all over the Internet.

  I pulled Dabrowski to his feet and grabbed his other arm. “Beezle, search him.”

  “Eww,” Beezle said.

  “Just check his pockets for a recording device,” I said.

  Dabrowski started struggling in earnest, which confirmed my suspicions. Beezle flew around and patted the front of Dabrowski’s jacket.

  “You can’t do this,” he said. “You have no authority to check my pockets and take my stuff.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. I have the right to a private conversation,” I said.

  I was irritated with myself for not considering this possibility even after Beezle had told me that Dabrowski was interested in me. I’d been too happy to be reunited with Beezle and too involved in our conversation to pay attention to our surroundings. Any one of my dozens of enemies could have walked up behind me and slit my throat before I’d have realized what happened.

  “The public has a right to know,” Dabrowski said as Beezle emerged triumphantly from the guy’s front coat pocket holding an iPhone aloft.

  “Please do not try to disguise your invasion of my privacy as journalistic integrity,” I said. “You’re a blogger. You’re not writing an investigative piece on public corruption for the Chicago Tribune. I’m a private citizen.”

  “You stopped being a private citizen the day you blasted all those vampires into oblivion on live television,” Dabrowski said.

  “I didn’t plan on having the event broadcast,” I muttered. “And it doesn’t matter, anyway. Just because I was witnessed doesn’t mean I belong to you, or to anyone else.”

  “Someone with powers like yours should be out protecting people,” Dabrowski said. “You have a responsibility to the citizens of this city.”

  “Don’t you talk to me about responsibility, boy,” I said furiously, spinning him around and grabbing him by the lapel. “You have no idea what I’ve done, what I’ve sacrificed, while all of you were safely sleeping in your beds dreaming of sugarplums. I was fighting a war before any of you even knew the war existed.”

  “And the public should know that,” Dabrowski said. “They should know that someone is out there working for them. You should be on all the morning shows, letting people know that all supernatural creatures aren’t killers.”

  I smiled, and I knew it was not a nice smile. “What makes you think I’m not a killer?”

  Dabrowski paled. “You don’t kill people. You save them.”

  “How old are you?” I asked casually.

  “Twenty-seven,” he said.

  “Would you like to make it to twenty-eight?”

  Beezle had been busily tapping away at the screen of the iPhone while this conversation was occurring. “Listen,” he said.

  He held up the phone and I heard my voice and Beezle’s, as clear as day.

  “You didn’t hear a thing, huh?” I said to Dabrowski.

  He swallowed. “What are you going to do?”

  “Drop the phone, Beezle,” I said.

  Beezle released the phone, and I blast
ed it with nightfire as it fell to the ground. There was nothing left of it except a few microscopic fragments.

  “My phone,” Dabrowski moaned. “That phone cost four hundred dollars!”

  “You can send me the bill,” I said as I released him. “And that will teach you not to mess with things you don’t understand in the future.”

  “You should be grateful, really,” Beezle said. “Just think. That could have been your head.”

  Dabrowski fell to his knees, picking up the tiny pieces that remained of his phone. Then he stood up and faced me, fire in his eyes. “I don’t care about the phone. Everything that just happened is going to be all over the Internet in an hour.”

  “Listen to me, Jack Dabrowski,” I said. “If you continue your pursuit and harassment of me, if one word of anything I said or did is printed on your blog, you will regret it.”

  “You think you can threaten me and get away with it?” Dabrowski said.

  “Yes,” I said simply.

  “Do not mess around with her,” Beezle said. “She has this addiction to fire. I don’t know where it came from. But she might just decide to burn your house down.”

  “With you in it,” I added.

  Dabrowski shook his head. “I can’t believe you’re like this. I thought you would be nicer.”

  “I don’t know why you thought that,” I said. “The only thing you’ve ever seen me do is kill things.”

  I turned and walked away then, leaving Dabrowski staring after me.

  Beezle waited until we crossed the street and we were well away from the nosy blogger before speaking. “So, what are we going to do about that problem?”

  I shrugged. “Burning down his house sounds like a great idea.”

  “You’re not serious,” Beezle said. “I thought you were just throwing your weight around to scare him.”

  “I wouldn’t burn it down with him inside,” I clarified. “But if he becomes too much of a liability, I will definitely make sure that he realizes he’s going to suffer.”

  “And there’s the dark-side Maddy I know and despise,” Beezle said.