My many-greats-grandmother had been forced to pay a price to the universe for defying death. When she had returned to her body, both her eyes and her arm had been missing. And I honestly wasn’t sure that her brains were all there, either. Of course, it was hard to tell with Evangeline. She had been somewhat unhinged to begin with.
I don’t care what she looks like. I just want her back.
“I know,” I said, touching my chest with my hand, the place where my heart was always bruised, never completely whole. “I know. But I saw Gabriel in the land of the dead before I returned here from that place Puck sent me. And I didn’t bring him back. I didn’t bring him back because it isn’t right. He’s dead; Chloe’s dead. Our burden is to live, to go on without them.”
His eyes filled up again, and I put my arms around his shoulders. He rested his head against mine, and cried, making no sound. I cried, too, cried for Samiel and Chloe, for Stock, for Gabriel. I cried for Patrick, the best friend I’d had before I’d discovered I was the daughter of a fallen angel. I cried for all the grief I’d caused and been given, cried for the lives I’d taken and the innocent lives that had been caught in the cross fire when monsters walked the Earth.
We cried until there were no more tears, and then we sat quietly together while the sun went down outside and darkness crept through the house.
Still Daharan did not come home.
After a long while Beezle came in the kitchen and turned on the small light above the gas range.
“I hate to interrupt,” he said, and for once he looked like he actually meant it. “But we have a couple of pressing problems to deal with.”
“The shifter could come back,” I said. My voice sounded rusty.
Beezle nodded. “Since Daharan appears to be missing in action, you and Nathaniel are going to have to combine your magic and figure out a way to lay some better protection over the house.”
“Otherwise the shifter could stand out in the street and kill us all without even coming inside,” I said. “I know.”
“Also, there’s the matter of the . . .” He trailed off, looking at Samiel uncertainly.
Body, Samiel signed. I’ll take care of her. It should be me.
“No,” I said. “Absolutely not. I don’t want you down there at all.”
I have the right to see her.
I thought of the room, all of Chloe’s inside parts on the outside. “You don’t want to remember her that way.”
Just what did the shifter do to her? Nathaniel wouldn’t say. Samiel stood up, helping me to my feet.
“Can’t you just trust me?” I said. “Do you have to see the horror for yourself?”
Something in my face must have convinced him, because he stared at me for a long time, then nodded.
“All right, then,” I said, relieved. “Oh, and I might have left Jack Dabrowski locked in the second storage unit.”
“Might have?” Beezle asked.
“I wasn’t sure what to do about him,” I said. “He’s only going to run straight home and get on the computer, and I don’t think it’s in the public interest for the whistle to be blown on a freaky shapeshifter right now.”
“I agree,” Beezle said. “But you can’t keep him in the storage unit forever. And you can’t have him living in the house. He’ll only pick up more intel that you won’t want disseminated on the Internet.”
“Have you been reading?” I asked. “You didn’t learn such fancy words on TV.”
“You’d be surprised what you can learn from TV,” Beezle said loftily.
We went into the living room, where Nathaniel and Jude were watching the news with grim faces. I knew both of them had heard every word that was spoken in the kitchen. That was the advantage of supernatural hearing.
“It’s already begun,” Jude said, indicating the screen.
The film showed several people handcuffed with black bags over their faces being led away by police. The voice-over said that the individuals were a family of supernatural origin and that police had been led to the offending family by a tip from their neighbors.
“It’s not just the shapeshifter we’ve got to worry about,” I said. “My neighbors know unnatural things happen in and around this house all the time. J.B. and the Agency used to make sure all the nine-one-one calls were intercepted so I wouldn’t be arrested. Whatever protection spell we use has got to deflect the human authorities as well. Otherwise we’ll be on the news with black bags over our heads.”
There was something else to consider, too. Lucifer was rather possessive of me, and his responses to different situations tended to be unpredictable. If by some strange chance the police managed to arrest me and lock me up, Lucifer might lose his mind and, say, smash the entire city of Chicago into oblivion. So it was definitely in my best interest as well as the people of the city that I not get taken.
Jude stood up. “Since night has fallen, we should dispose of Chloe’s remains while the shadows can hide us.”
You’re just going to throw her away like garbage? Samiel signed, his face angry.
“I don’t want to,” I said. “But what else can we do? We can’t risk someone finding her in the basement, and we can’t bury her in the backyard. Freshly turned soil is kind of a giveaway that you’ve been up to no good.”
“It would be safest to burn her,” Nathaniel said. “That way nothing will remain to direct the authorities to us.”
“It will be like cremation,” I said to Samiel. I could hear the pleading tone in my voice even if he could not. “You’ll be able to keep her ashes.”
“Of course, a giant conflagration in the yard might attract attention,” Beezle said.
“There are two fireplaces in this building,” Nathaniel said. “There is no reason to bring her outside.”
I sat down abruptly on the couch, my stomach churning. “This is sick. This is sick and horrible. Why are we standing here talking about burning Chloe like she’s just a logistical problem we need to work around? What is the matter with us?”
I expected Samiel to have another angry outburst, but he surprised me again by sitting beside me and taking my hand. It’s okay. I understand. I do. Something horrible has happened, and we’re not in a position to behave normally about it. You can’t call the police; you can’t have a funeral. Nathaniel’s right. Burning is the best way. It’s only her body, anyway, right? Her soul has gone through the Door.
My fists clenched involuntarily as I was seized by a flash of panic. What if her soul hadn’t gone through the Door? What if her death was so strange and unnatural that her ghost would stay and haunt me forever? For the second time that day, I wished J.B. were still at the Agency. He would be able to check the paperwork and verify that she had been taken by an Agent. I didn’t even want to consider what my former colleagues might think of one of their own being brutally murdered in my basement. And that led to another panicked thought. What if word spread around the Agency about what happened to Chloe, and I got blamed? What if a bunch of Agents were on their way here in the form of an angry lynch mob?
Stay calm, stay focused. Don’t borrow trouble, I thought. If a mob of angry Agents was on their way, there wasn’t much I could do about it, at least until they got here.
“I don’t want her burned up here,” I said. “I know it’s selfish. But let’s do it in the downstairs apartment.”
“Daharan’s a dragon. He won’t care,” Beezle said.
“Honestly, I don’t care if he cares,” I said. “I just don’t want to look at my fireplace every night from now until forever and remember that someone I liked and respected met her final end there. Daharan isn’t going to be here for the rest of his life. I am.”
“Let us take care of this now,” Nathaniel said. “Then we can focus on the protection spell.”
Nathaniel started toward the back stairs and I followed, indicating Jude, Samiel and Beezle should stay behind. When we reached the back door Nathaniel turned to me.
“I do not think this is a
task for you,” he said.
“Believe me, I’m not volunteering to scoop up body parts,” I said. “Something Samiel said made me wonder if Chloe’s soul might be hanging around, and I want to check.”
He nodded. “I did not consider that. You are correct. It would not do if her ghost were lurking about your home. At any rate, it will not be necessary to physically clean the room. I believe I will be able to do it without touching anything. I will use nightfire to destroy the body so the burning will be quick. I will be able to collect the ashes for Samiel.”
“Then why don’t you want me there?” I said as we went down to the basement.
“Do you really need to see her again?” Nathaniel said. “Does not the argument you made to Samiel apply to you as well? Do you need to wallow in the pain in order to feel it fully?”
“No,” I said, suddenly angry and not knowing why. “But you don’t need to treat me like I’m some helpless little girl. I’ve faced plenty on my own without you to protect me.”
He turned to me suddenly. Because I stood a couple of steps higher than him, our faces were at the same level for a change instead of his looming above me as normal. He was angry, too, and I could tell he’d been holding it in for a while.
“But you will not let me protect you,” he said, his voice low and furious. “You must always push me to one side, determined to face the monster on your own, to prove that you do not need a shield. You will not let me do as I should do, as a man is supposed to do. You will not let me show that I love you.”
“It’s got nothing to do with love,” I said. “I’m not going to let someone else take punishment that should be mine. Why should you suffer when it’s my responsibility?”
“It is about love,” Nathaniel said, the anger draining away from him suddenly. “It is about your love for Gabriel, and his for you. He stood in front of you when Azazel was there with his sword, and you have never forgiven yourself for that. You have never accepted that he died in your place.”
All the emotions that had been stirred up by the events of the day were tangled inside me—love, grief, anger, fear, guilt. I didn’t know what to do with all of this emotion. I didn’t have anywhere to put it, and I was afraid. I was afraid that if I loved Nathaniel, or if I let him protect me as he wanted, the worst would happen again.
“Do you want me to be left like that again?” I said. “Will you feel that you’ve done your duty if I’m left standing over your body as I was with him?”
“Will you feel that you have done your duty if I’m left that way instead?” he said. “Do you think I could live with the loss if I thought I could save you?”
“No,” I said, my voice small.
He put his arms around me. I resisted for a moment, then relaxed. There was comfort here, and I needed to learn to accept it.
“You are not being weak if you allow me to share the burden with you,” he said.
“I know,” I said. And I did know, in my head. But my heart was another matter entirely.
It was stupid of me to fight over every little thing. Didn’t I have enough conflict in my life without picking a fight with my friends and allies? But I was afraid of weakness, afraid of exactly what Nathaniel had said. Death had been the first companion of my life, and Death never seemed to leave me.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He didn’t respond, and I pulled away from his shoulder to look at his expression.
His face was frozen, a mask of pain, and blood was seeping from his mouth and nose.
“Nathaniel!” I screamed as his body started to crumple. I grabbed him as he went limp in my arms, but his weight was too much for me when I was already off balance from pregnancy. He tumbled away to the first-floor landing.
“Jude!” I shouted. “Jude, help me!”
I heard Jude and Samiel running. A moment later Jude shouldered past me, picking up Nathaniel’s limp form and carrying him back up the stairs past me.
Samiel and Beezle stood at the top of the stairs watching as Jude carried Nathaniel into our bedroom. I huffed up the steps after him.
“The shapeshifter has to be nearby,” Beezle said. “You’ve got to protect the house before he comes after you.”
“Nathaniel,” I said, trying to follow Jude, but Samiel grabbed my arm.
Beezle’s right. You’re the only one who’s strong enough to protect us.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said. “I’ve never done a spell like this on my own. Nathaniel’s the architect. I just put power into whatever he designs. The only thing I know how to do on my own is destroy. And you need to let me go because I have to help him. He’s bleeding from the inside. He’s going to die if I don’t do something.”
Nathaniel had almost died once protecting me, when I’d killed Azazel and the result had triggered a violent explosion of magic. But back then I hadn’t cared about him. He’d been an unwanted bodyguard, a replacement for Gabriel who could never replace my husband.
Now he was something else to me. I wasn’t sure what that something was, or what I wanted him to be, but I wasn’t going to lose him five seconds after we’d argued about this very thing. I wasn’t going to stand over another bleeding body knowing that my enemy had taken someone else from me.
I know how to do a healing spell. Gabriel taught me that much, Samiel signed. But you’ve got to protect us. You’ve got to protect your baby.
It was hard to think when part of me was panicking, picturing Nathaniel in his death throes on the bed where we slept together. It was hard to accept that Samiel could fix this when I needed to do it myself. I needed to see with my own eyes that Nathaniel would be all right.
And as I thought this, I felt a questing thread of power swirling around me, seeking, hunting. It wanted me. It wanted to destroy me and my child.
I didn’t think. I pushed my own power out, against the thing that shouldn’t be here, that shouldn’t be able to violate the sanctity of my home but somehow had.
The other’s magic resisted. It pressed back against my will, and the resistance hurt. This magic was a strange and alien thing. It was not the product of its own will but another’s, and as such it wasn’t affected by emotion as I was. The shifter had been told to do something and it would exert whatever force necessary to achieve that task.
I pushed harder, drawing deeper into the reserves of my power but not dipping into the well of darkness. I didn’t know what might happen if I tapped into my black heart when I was in my present confused emotional state. There was a good chance that I wouldn’t have control over my magic, and then I might end up destroying us and everyone on the block in an effort to keep the shifter out.
On the upside, the shifter problem would be solved.
I exerted more will, more magic, pushing against the shifter’s power. I needed to get that thread out so I could seal up the house. The shifter’s spell receded against me, and I could actually feel it draw its attention away from Nathaniel to me. The spell crept toward me again.
But Nathaniel is safe, I thought. The knowledge that the shifter was no longer killing him by degrees while I fought its magic helped me relax, helped my own magic flow more freely. I gave a great push with my power, envisioned it shoving the shifter’s spell out of the house.
The creature did not expect the sudden surge, and its magic seemed to rear back for a moment. That allowed me to send my own spell around the house like a protective bubble. I slumped against the wall, panting with effort. It shouldn’t have been that difficult to get rid of the shifter. I had enough magic to kill some of the most powerful creatures that had ever walked the Earth.
Too much of myself was bound up in the darkness now, I realized. By not accessing that part of my power, I was cutting myself off from my strength.
I noticed Samiel had left the kitchen, and Beezle was sitting on the counter watching me.
“I saw some of that,” he said. “Didn’t expect something so low could give you so much trouble.”
“I didn
’t expect it, either,” I said. “Did Samiel go to help Nathaniel?”
“Yeah,” Beezle said.
I straightened, intending to go to the bedroom to check on Nathaniel, when I suddenly buckled in half with pain.
“What is it?” Beezle asked, alarmed. “Is it the baby?”
“No,” I said. “It’s the shifter. He’s shoving against the protective spell, trying to make it break.”
Because I put so much of myself in the spell, I could feel the probing magic of the shifter, looking for cracks, and realized I would not be able to relax and let the spell do its work. As long as the creature was outside, it would try to get in.
“This thing is like the effing Terminator,” I said, pouring magic out to reinforce the bubble. “It’s not going to go away.”
“I’m not sure this is good for you,” Beezle said. “You look kind of sick.”
“It’s not going to be good for any of us if it gets inside,” I said.
Rivulets of sweat poured down my face as I chased the shifter’s attempts to crack my spell, patching weaknesses as I went.
Samiel and Jude came out of the bedroom and saw me slouched against the wall. Jude’s shirt was covered in Nathaniel’s blood.
“What’s happening?” Jude demanded.
“The creature is trying to break Maddy’s protective spell,” Beezle said. “It would be really helpful if Daharan came home right now.”
Is this good for the baby? Samiel signed.
“Not a lot of better options,” I said through gritted teeth. “I need you all to go away. I can’t concentrate when you’re talking to me.”
“If the creature is performing a spell, it’s probably nearby. This is our chance to catch him,” Jude said.
“You can’t go outside,” I said. “If you go after the shifter, you’ll break the circle and then we’ll be right back where we started.”
I lowered my head to the cool tile of the kitchen floor, lying on my side, and closed my eyes. I don’t remember a lot about what happened that night. The shifter’s magic tried to break, and my magic blocked. And this seemed to happen over and over again. I never sensed any anger or frustration on the part of the creature, only a relentless determination.
Black Spring Page 11