Black Spring

by Christina Henry

  I stared at Nathaniel. “Daharan wouldn’t do this.”

  “You think he is not capable of murder?”

  “Well, no. Everyone is capable of murder if pushed,” I said. “But there’s no reason for Daharan to do something like this to a woman he’s never met. Whoever did this . . . they enjoyed it.”

  “You forget that Daharan is Lucifer’s brother,” Nathaniel said. “I have seen Lucifer do all this and more simply to relieve his boredom.”

  “Daharan is not Lucifer,” I said.

  Nathaniel opened his mouth to argue some more but stopped when a very loud thump came from the other storage space.

  “There’s someone in there,” I said, my heart quickening.

  Nathaniel and Jude immediately stepped in front of me.

  “It may be the killer,” Nathaniel said.

  “You couldn’t smell an intruder?” I asked Jude as the two of them cautiously approached the other storage area.

  Jude shook his head. “Too much blood. It overwhelms everything else.”

  I nodded my head, remembering the time we had stumbled upon Azazel’s lab and something similar had happened.

  Nathaniel and Jude moved in fluid synchronicity, silently exchanging glances as they moved into place. Nathaniel yanked the door open and Jude rushed in with a roar, Nathaniel directly behind him. Their footsteps stopped abruptly, and I moved around the door so I could see what was going on. The two of them had stopped just inside the entrance, staring at a figure on the floor. All I could see was a pair of legs clad in blue jeans and pale bare feet.

  Not another body, I thought.

  But it wasn’t. The two men moved aside as I joined them, staring down in surprise. It was Jack Dabrowski.

  His hands were bound behind him, his mouth covered with tape, and his eyes were terrified. As soon as he saw me his gaze widened and he kicked out his feet, trying to move away. He shouted through the tape, shaking his head back and forth.

  I had a strange sense of déjà vu as I looked behind me, saw no one standing there, and pointed a finger at my chest. “Me?”

  “The shapeshifter again,” Nathaniel said. He knelt down to try to help Dabrowski, who’d been able to flee only a foot or two before he came up against the boxes of who-knew-what that filled most of the room.

  Most of the boxes had been there when my mother was alive. Interestingly, when Daharan had rebuilt the house after the Retrievers burned it down, he’d duplicated the original structure and contents down to the last detail. It was almost as if the house had never been destroyed at all.

  Jack wriggled around on the floor, making it impossible for Nathaniel to take the tape off his mouth and cut his bonds.

  “For the love of all the gods that are and ever were, hold still,” Nathaniel said through clenched teeth.

  Jude joined him, holding Dabrowski’s legs to limit his movement. Nathaniel managed to rip the tape from Dabrowski’s mouth and the blogger immediately began yelling his head off.

  “Get her away from me! Get me out of here! I saw what you did. I saw you. And everyone in the world is going to know you’re a monster.” His face was pale and sweaty and his eyes rolled in his head like a wild horse.

  “Jack,” I said. “Whatever you think you saw, it wasn’t me.”

  “Of course you would say that. You don’t want your reputation as the savior of Chicago to be tarnished,” he said.

  I was trying to be patient and sympathetic because he’d obviously been through an ordeal, but I’d been through an ordeal or two myself since waking up that morning and my patience was stretched pretty thin.

  “My reputation as ‘the savior of Chicago,’ as you put it, was nothing I wanted in the first place. It was your fault, anyway. You’re the one who went online advertising what I’d done. All I ever wanted was to live anonymously.”

  “So you could carry out your atrocities without the glare of the public eye on you!” Jack shouted.

  “Seriously? Where do you get your dialogue from?” I said. “You’re like a scene from a bad movie. Look, why don’t you tell us what happened?”

  “You know what happened! You did it!”

  “Let’s say I have a case of temporary amnesia, then,” I snapped. “Just give me the recap in your own words.”

  Jude had by this time cut the rope that bound Jack’s hands. He scrambled to his feet, rubbing his wrists, which had been chafed raw by the bindings.

  “I don’t have to tell you anything,” Jack said. “I’m leaving. I have a murder to report.”

  I was still close to the door, so I moved to stand in the frame. Jude and Nathaniel both reached for Jack, to hold him back, but I shook my head at them. I wanted to see what Jack would do when confronted by me, and only me. I wanted to see whether he really believed I was such a monster.

  He stopped about a foot away from me. He was several inches taller than me (as most people seem to be) and I was hugely pregnant. Jack could probably muscle his way past me if he wanted. To all outward appearance I didn’t seem to be much of a threat. Yet sweat beaded on his upper lip and ran down the side of his bloodless face.

  The shadow inside me, the dark magic that slept under the surface, awoke with a snarl of pleasure. The darkness was a predator, and here was prey. I refused to let the shadow run free, but I could use it to my advantage for the moment. Jack took a half step back, and I knew he had seen my eyes change.

  “Madeline,” Nathaniel said, the word filled with warning.

  I ignored him, speaking only to Jack. “If I’m a murderer, as you say, what makes you think I would let you go?”

  He took another half step back, shuffling away from me.

  “These guys will stop you,” Jack said in desperation. “The only reason you did what you did before was because no one was around to witness it.”

  “Neither of them has enough power to stop me,” I said, and in saying it I knew it to be true.

  Nathaniel’s magic almost made him my equal. Almost. But I was the stronger one. The two strains of Lucifer’s power that were alive inside me, plus the magic that came to me from Azazel, had combined in such a way that there wasn’t much out there that could stop me if I didn’t want to be stopped.

  Jack looked at Jude and Nathaniel, who watched him impassively. “What do you want from me?”

  “All I want is for you to tell me what happened,” I said. “How is it that you were on the spot? I just told you to get lost and stay lost this morning.”

  “As if I would let a threat keep me from reporting the truth to the public,” Jack said, a trace of his usual zeal back in his voice. “Anyway, I put micro cameras and bugs all around outside so I would know what you were up to. I knew all of you had left the house because I saw you leave, even that guy who usually hangs around the house all day.”

  “Daharan?” I asked. “I don’t suppose you know when he left.”

  Jack shrugged. “It was right after the wolf and the gargoyle and the angel. He walked out the back and into the alley.”

  “Did you see where he went?” I asked.

  “Nah, the cameras don’t go that far,” he said.

  He seemed to be relaxing, getting more comfortable as he told his story. Which meant on some subconscious level, he knew I had not done anything wrong. Anyone who truly believed they could be brutally slaughtered at any moment would not be bragging about the bugs he’d set around my house.

  The shadow did not like this. It wanted Jack to be afraid. I pushed that feeling down, away from conscious thought. Of course I didn’t want Jack to fear me. I just wanted to get to the bottom of this mess.

  “So what happened after Daharan left?” I asked.

  “Well, I jumped on my bike and rode over here, thinking you might have left a window open or something and I could get in here and look around.”

  “That’s called breaking and entering,” Jude said.

  Jack waved his hand, as if to say breaking and entering was just a technicality in pursuit of trut
h and justice. “Anyway, I got here and I left my bike in the alley. I was gonna open the fence when I heard you talking to that girl. The one you killed.”

  His voice had gone flat as he remembered. “Then I saw that one of the dogs was dead, and the girl looked angry. The back door to the house was open. And then the weirdest thing happened. It seemed like everything froze somehow—the girl, the dogs, me—and the only thing that could move was you. You turned your head, like you’d known I was there all along, and you smiled.”

  Jack shuddered. The shapeshifter’s smile had clearly not been a pleasure to behold.

  “Then—I don’t know how it happened or how I got there—but somehow I was standing in the doorway of the room next to this one. And the girl, she was being torn to pieces.” He was crying now, a steady stream of tears running down his face as he remembered. “Why did you make me watch that? Why did you make me see?”

  He covered his eyes with his hands, his whole body shaking. I hated to press him, but I needed to know more. I needed to know how such a thing could have been done.

  “But how did the shifter get in the house?” I said. “He shouldn’t have been able to cross the threshold to bring you and Chloe inside.”

  Jack looked up, his face confused. “Shifter? What are you talking about?”

  “How did I get inside?” I asked impatiently. “How did I kill Chloe in front of you?”

  “How in the hell should I know?” Jack said, his face taut and angry. “I don’t know anything about magic. Like I said, somehow I was here and she was there and she was getting ripped up, and she was screaming . . .”

  “Was I in the room?” I asked. “This is important, Jack.”

  “No!” he shouted. “I don’t know why you’re asking me all these questions. I don’t know how you did it, but you were still outside and we were here and somehow she was being torn to pieces.”

  Jude, Nathaniel and I shared a horrified glance.

  “It doesn’t need to come in the house,” I said. I was cold all over, and I covered my belly with my hands. “It doesn’t need to see us or touch us to do its magic. We’re not safe here. We’re not safe anywhere.”

  I glanced around at the walls of my house, feeling betrayed. This was my childhood home. It had always been a refuge against the madness outside. I should have been safe there. It had always sheltered me and mine.

  All magical creatures were bound by the same basic laws. The sacredness of the domicile was paramount. You could not enter without an invitation. You were bound by the host’s terms of hospitality. These were basic things that all magical beings knew to be true.

  Even the most powerful creatures in the universe were forced to submit, which was the reason why I had never invited Lucifer into my home. But this shifter had overcome the protection of the house, something I had never seen or heard of before.

  It had obviously been forced to follow the letter of the law. Its physical body had remained outside. But its magic had somehow found a way through our defenses, lured my dogs outside and killed one of them, then dropped Jack and Chloe inside and killed Chloe by remote. If it could do all those things, then it didn’t matter if its body stayed outside. It could slaughter all of us in our sleep.

  “We can’t fight it,” I said. “We can’t fight something that can look like any of us, smell like any of us. It can kill from a distance, and the rules of magic don’t appear to apply. How can I protect my baby against something like that?”

  Nathaniel came to me then, put his arms around me, held me close. “We will find a way. We will increase the protection on the house. Daharan is more than powerful enough to plug the holes, so to speak. And if he is not, then we will go to Alerian again. It was he who created this creature. He should know how to stop it.”

  I laughed bitterly. “The last encounter didn’t go so well. Did you already forget the giant sea creature that trashed the street? I don’t think Alerian is going to be volunteering to help us anytime in the near future.”

  “I will not allow you to be terrorized in your own home. There must be something we can do, and I will discover it,” Nathaniel said.

  We all heard the sound of footsteps descending the stairs. Jude immediately rushed out of the room to intercept.

  I gave Nathaniel a panicked look. “I don’t want Samiel to see Chloe that way.”

  “We will take him upstairs,” Nathaniel said, pulling away from me. “Should I tell him?”

  “As gently as you can,” I said. “But don’t let him come downstairs, even if you have to knock him out.”

  Nathaniel hurried out after Jude.

  “Shit,” I said, leaning against the wall and rubbing my eyes. “It really should be me. I should be the one to tell him. I owe him that much.”

  Jack Dabrowski had been observing all this rather avidly for someone who had just witnessed a traumatic event. Now he cocked his head to one side like a curious dog and spoke.

  “So, am I to gather from all of this that you actually didn’t kill that girl and tie me up down here?”

  “Of course I didn’t, you moron,” I said tiredly. “I told you I didn’t.”

  “Excuse me,” Jack said stiffly. “I just witnessed something horrible and it may have confused me for a few moments.”

  “You shouldn’t have been here in the first place,” I said. “I told you that—jeez, was it only this morning? This is turning into one of the longest days ever.”

  “And there’s some kind of shapeshifter running around that duplicates anyone’s appearance?” he asked. “And that’s what actually murdered the girl and tied me up down here?”

  “Yes,” I said. “And if that ends up on your blog, I will personally come to your house and take a sledgehammer to your computer.”

  “Don’t you think people have a right to know that there is a creature running around that can copy the appearance of their loved ones, and then kill them while under the guise of that person?” he asked.

  “No. All that will do is make everyone doubt those close to them, to create more fear and paranoia in a city that’s already seen plenty,” I said. “And anyway, it’s not a threat to the average individual. It’s only interested in me.”

  “So it’s only a threat to anyone who hangs around you—is that what you’re saying?”

  “Yes, and don’t you think you should take that as a hint to run as fast as you can away from here?” I said. “You saw what happened to Chloe. That could have just as easily been you. Why can’t you appreciate that?”

  “I do,” he said, and he did appear sincere. “I know it could have been me. But it’s because it wasn’t me, because I saw it happen, that I need to warn everyone else. I don’t want anyone else to witness that.”

  “I can’t believe this,” I said, and walked to the door of the storage area.

  Jack started to follow me. I held up one hand, using my power to keep him in place.

  “No, you stay here for now,” I said. “Until I figure out what to do with you.”

  “You can’t do that,” he said angrily. “You have no right to keep me here.”

  “I have every right,” I said. “I have people to protect, too. And I don’t need curiosity seekers hanging around the house getting eaten up by the bad things that come looking for me.”

  I shut the door and put a spell around it to keep it sealed. Then I released the hold on Jack. A second later he was pounding on the door, yelling for me to let him out.

  8

  “He’d better not keep that up all night, or Daharan will come down here and gag him,” I said to myself.

  I felt a little twinge of sick worry in my stomach as I slowly climbed the steps. Where was Daharan? If he had been at home, as he always was, the shifter wouldn’t have been able to kill Chloe or Stock. He might have even been able to capture the creature. We could be on our way to confront its master right this minute.

  Instead I had a slaughtered friend in my storage room, and a trio of dogs turned to a duo. I did
n’t feel safe in my own house, and I didn’t know what to do about it. I pushed open the kitchen door slowly. Nathaniel stood by the refrigerator. Jude was directly opposite him, leaning against the counter. Both of them looked helpless. Beezle perched next to the coffeemaker, his eyes sad. I couldn’t see Samiel.

  I moved around Jude and found Samiel collapsed on the ground, his arms around his knees, his face buried in his arms. I waved the rest of them out of the room. They went, looking relieved. I approached Samiel cautiously. I didn’t know what he would think, or say. I didn’t know if he would blame me.

  He looked up as I crouched down beside him. His beautiful green eyes were red with grief, and his face was wet with tears.

  “Samiel,” I said.

  I thought I knew. I thought I understood. But I didn’t.

  “Understood what?” I said, confused. I’d expected him to rail at me, to shout at me, to hold me responsible for Chloe’s death.

  I thought I understood what you felt when Gabriel died. I was sad and grieving, too. But it’s not like this. I didn’t know it was like having your heart and your lungs ripped out.

  “Yes, that’s what it’s like,” I said, and there I was again, in that memory that looped forever, the memory that never left me even when I wanted it to.

  Hot blood and cold snow and dead eyes, eyes that loved me once and were gone now.

  I took a deep shuddering breath, drawing myself back to the present. I could drown there in that memory still, under the water of my grief.

  “That’s what it’s like,” I repeated. “But you keep breathing. Your heart keeps beating. And you live.”

  I don’t know if I want to live with this.

  “You have to,” I said. “Where she has gone you cannot follow.”

  But you can. You went into the land of the dead. You took Evangeline’s soul out and returned it to Lucifer. You could do that for Chloe.

  I shook my head at him. “You know that what I did was unnatural, and only because I was forced to. Once something is dead, it should stay dead. That’s the natural order of things. Anyway, you didn’t see Evangeline when I brought her back.”