Black Spring

by Christina Henry

  There was darkness and pressure, and I resisted it with everything I had. Then suddenly it was morning, and the sun was streaming in through the windows. The pressure abruptly eased, and I opened my eyes.

  Nathaniel sat beside me, cross-legged, on the floor. He was pale and somehow appeared thinner. But he was alive. His eyes had dark circles under them.

  “You’re okay,” I said, reaching my hand toward him.

  His fingers wrapped around mine. “As are you.”

  There was a lot unspoken between us, as usual. And as usual, it didn’t really seem like the time to go into it.

  “The shifter’s gone,” I said, slowly easing into an upright position. Every part of me was stiff from spending the night on the kitchen floor.

  “Did your magic force it to leave?” Nathaniel asked.

  I shook my head. “It was all I could do to keep it out. I think maybe its master called it back.”

  “Why was it so difficult for you to hold the creature away?” Nathaniel asked. “I have felt, and seen, the breadth and depth of your power. This should have been child’s play for you.”

  I explained my theory about my power being bound up in the darkness inside me.

  Nathaniel nodded. “And you did not wish to lose control, yes?”

  “I thought that would be a bad thing,” I said.

  “We must find a way for you to draw upon that magic again,” Nathaniel said. “Without it, you are too vulnerable to threats.”

  “I don’t know how I’m going to do that without becoming a tool of Lucifer,” I said. “No matter how hard I’ve tried, it seems that he’s winning.”

  “That is not my Madeline talking,” Nathaniel said. “My Madeline does not give up. She spits in the eye of immortals.”

  I gave a little laugh. “Your Madeline is really tired right now.”

  “Then you must rest,” Nathaniel said.

  And he reached for me. I thought he was going to put his arms around me, help me up or even carry me.

  Instead he put his hands around my throat and started to squeeze.

  9

  His eyes changed, bled from jewel-bright blue to red as I clawed at his hands, kicking my feet in attempt to get away from his killing touch.

  Madeline!

  Someone was calling me, but I couldn’t tell who it was. My hearing seemed to be fading in and out. Nathaniel’s eyes were disappearing beneath the splotches of black on my vision.

  Madeline!

  Hands on my shoulders, someone shaking me roughly. A stinging slap across my face, and I opened my eyes, and saw Nathaniel.

  I moved without thinking, jerking away from him.

  He moved toward me, and I scooted farther away. His eyes were hurt and confused.

  “Madeline?”

  I put my hand to my throat, which felt sore and bruised. “You were choking me.”

  He shook his head. “It was not me. But you were being choked. I could see the shape of hands around your neck as you slept. That is why I woke you.”

  It was hard to shake off the sense that Nathaniel was lying to me. It had seemed so real, like the kind of conversation we would have together. Was that the intention? Not to kill me, but to plant a seed of suspicion against someone I trusted?

  “It must have been the shifter again,” I said, struggling to rise to my feet. “It wasn’t able to break through the protection I put around the house, but when I fell asleep I was vulnerable and it found a way in. It was a dream, but it seems that if it tries to kill me there, then it will kill me here.”

  Nathaniel held out his hand to me, and I took it with some reluctance. It was a mark of the fragility of our relationship that I could believe so easily that he would try to strangle me. I was a little angry with myself about it.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked, trying to push away the lingering unease.

  “Much better, thanks to Samiel. But do not concern yourself with my health. I have been up and about for several hours. I am much more worried about the notion that the shifter can reach you when you are asleep and hurt you through your dreams,” Nathaniel said as he led me to the dining room. Jude, Samiel and Beezle sat around the table eating waffles and bacon.

  “Yeah, Freddy Krueger has nothing on this guy,” I muttered.

  “Who?” Nathaniel asked.

  “Nobody,” I said. “Just a horror movie character.”

  Beezle snorted. “A horror movie character who scared the bejesus out of you until you were about fifteen years old.”

  “Apparently I was right to be terrified, because the shifter just tried to kill me in my sleep,” I said as I took my seat at the table. “And how is it that there are waffles and bacon? Wasn’t I lying on the floor in the kitchen?”

  “We just stepped around you,” Beezle said. “Some of us were hungry, and we didn’t know if you were going to lie there all day.”

  “I was trying to protect the people in the house,” I said. “I wasn’t taking a nap.”

  “From what I can hear, you were taking a nap,” Beezle said. “Since Freddy was trying to get you and all of that.”

  “Have I survived so many murder attempts that you just don’t care anymore?” I asked.

  “It is kind of getting old. But I much prefer live Maddy to dead Maddy,” he added hastily as Nathaniel glared at him. “So what’s up with the shifter? Is he still trying to get in?”

  I shook my head. “No, I can’t feel him anymore. I think the attempt to get into the dream was a last-ditch effort.”

  “The shifter has endless power at its disposal, and it obviously is out to get you,” Jude said. “So why would it leave?”

  I shrugged. “Perhaps its master called it away.”

  “We will have to design a better form of protection for your home,” Nathaniel said. “One that does not require so much effort and difficulty on your part.”

  “Yes, and allows us to get in and out of the house when the creature is nearby,” Jude said. “It doesn’t sit well with me, cowering inside while it runs unfettered outside.”

  “Where is Daharan?” I said. “It’s not like him to stay away so long.”

  “There was no sign of him downstairs in the apartment,” Nathaniel said. “And I should emphasize no sign.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning there is not one stick of furniture, article of clothing, or morsel of food downstairs. I do not know if Daharan simply conjures that which he needs when he needs it or if he leaves this dimension when he leaves your apartment, but there is nothing there.”

  “And you think that’s suspicious,” I said.

  “It is certainly odd.”

  “What were you doing down there anyway?” I asked, feeling defensive about Daharan, as usual.

  “I took care of the arrangements we discussed earlier while you slept.”

  I gave him a blank look for a moment before I realized what he was talking about. Chloe. He’d burned Chloe’s body in the fireplace downstairs as I’d asked. Which reminded me . . .

  “Shit, Jack Dabrowski is still downstairs in the storage area,” I said. “I totally forgot about him.”

  “What should we do with him?” Nathaniel asked. “If you release him now, you will have the same problem as yesterday. He will run straight home to his computer and publish everything that occurred in this house.”

  “All in the name of ‘warning’ the public,” I said. “I know. I wish there was somewhere we could stash him until the wedding was over.”

  “Why until the wedding’s over?” Beezle said.

  “I’m hoping by then to have solved the shifter problem and it won’t matter what he publishes.”

  Since Samiel was at the table, I did not add that the burning of Chloe’s body would protect us from any murder charges that might come up if the authorities happened to read and believe Jack’s blog.

  “Awfully confident, aren’t you?” Beezle said. “We haven’t found a way to track the shifter yet, and you think you’ll h
ave the problem solved before tomorrow?”

  “The wedding is on Saturday,” I said. “Today is Thursday. That gives me two days. I think. Unless I slept longer than I thought.”

  “No, it’s still Thursday,” Beezle said. “But Lucifer lives in California, and you’ll be expected as an overnight guest. You don’t arrive for a wedding on the same morning as the festivities.”

  “Why the hell not?” I said. “I don’t want to spend one second more than necessary in Lucifer’s house. And I certainly don’t want to sleep there.”

  “This is one of those things you really don’t have a choice about,” Beezle said. “Lucifer expects you on Friday night, whether you want to be there or not.”

  “What, you can read Lucifer’s mind now?” I asked.

  “No, he sent me a message on Facebook,” Beezle said.

  “I don’t even want to know what Lucifer is doing on Facebook,” I said.

  “Reposting pictures, like everyone else,” he said. “Lucifer’s home has very strict private portal access, and he’s allowing you to transport directly there, along with the rest of the crew.”

  “Gee, what a privilege,” I said. “So what am I supposed to do about Lock and Barrel? What am I supposed to do with Jack Dabrowski?”

  Beezle shrugged. “The dogs can probably take care of themselves for a day or two, believe it or not. They are supernatural creatures that only act doglike because of you. As for Jack, let him go and deal with the consequences. Or keep him here and deal with the consequences.”

  “Either way I don’t like the consequences,” I said.

  “Which would you like least?” Beezle asked. “Jack telling a wild story about a monster that can kill people from afar, or Jack possibly finding out about Lucifer’s wedding and following you there?”

  I shuddered at the thought of Dabrowski at Lucifer’s wedding. “Let him go, then.”

  “Shall I simply throw him in the street?” Nathaniel asked, rising from the table.

  “No, escort him nicely out the back door and encourage him to forget anything that happened here yesterday. Not that it will do any good. Anyway, he said he rode his bike here so he can probably get himself home without too much trouble.”

  Nathaniel left the room to take care of the Jack problem. This was going to continue to be a problem until Jack figured out it was in his best interest to keep his mouth shut about me or until he was killed, whichever came first. In the meantime, he would probably be pretty irritated about being locked in my storage area all night long, and I wasn’t in the mood to deal with him.

  “So, just to update the status of our various situations,” Beezle said. “Alerian is unhappy with you and will probably send another monster to kill you soon since the first one didn’t do the job. The city’s plan for locking us all up is going forward and you haven’t come up with a solution to stop it. The shifter has way more power than we first thought and we have no idea who its master is. The most famous supernatural blogger in the city witnessed a horrific killing in your house and then you pissed him off by locking him in your basement for twelve hours. And the first of the fallen is getting married in two days and all of your friends and enemies are invited to the party.”

  “Seems pretty standard for us, doesn’t it?” I said. “Lots of insurmountable situations to surmount. Let’s start with the protection for the house. We’ve got to have a way to keep the shifter out; otherwise none of us will be able to sleep again.”

  “While you were passed out in the kitchen I went online and looked up some information about domicile protection,” Beezle said.

  “I wasn’t passed out; I was focusing,” I said.

  “Whatever. Anyway, I talked to some witches and they gave me some tips,” Beezle said.

  “Shouldn’t you know all about domicile protection since you’re a home guardian?” I asked.

  “My job is to watch for intruders. I can’t do a damn thing to actually keep them out. The threshold is supposed to do that,” Beezle said. “Luckily the witches did know a thing or two about spells that can get past the protection of the home. It seems that some of them have cast those kinds of spells in the past.”

  “Isn’t that handy,” I said dryly.

  “Totally,” Beezle said. “The point is that you and Nathaniel should be able to seal the house up pretty tight.”

  “What’s going to happen when we go to Grandpa’s house tomorrow?” I asked.

  “I would hope that this creature’s master would have the sense to not attack you while you’re in the presence of the Morningstar,” Jude said.

  “I’m not sure we can count on that,” I said. “Beezle will be with me all the time so we’ll be able to see any direct attack coming, but what if the shifter tries to pull the same trick? Stand outside the house and attack from a distance?”

  Beezle shook his head. “Lucifer is going to have that mansion protected from anything and everything. Remember, he’s a lot more powerful than you are. And he’s had a lot more time to collect enemies. He would never risk being caught off guard in his own home. There will be layers upon layers of protection. I don’t think you’ll have to worry about murder by remote control.”

  “So just the direct kind of murder, then,” I said.

  “Anyone who attends the wedding would conform to the laws of hospitality. Most of the creatures attending are old, and many of them have conflicts with each other. But they know that if they air their grievances in Lucifer’s home, they’ll be violating some ancient understandings. You may actually be safer in Lucifer’s presence than you would be anywhere else.”

  “There’s something really wrong about that,” I said.

  Nathaniel returned to the dining room, looking disgruntled. “That boy doesn’t have the sense to be terrified, even after what he witnessed.”

  “Let’s not worry about Jack right now,” I said. “Beezle apparently got some info from witches that will help us protect the house.”

  The five of us discussed the spells, worked out a plan, and Nathaniel and I spent the rest of the morning sealing off the house. While we did that, Jude and Samiel went to see Alerian as my “ambassadors.” The hope was that he would either 1) call off any additional giant monster attacks that might traumatize the locals, or 2) help us figure out a way to track down and defeat the shifter and its master. Or both.

  But when Samiel and Jude returned, they told me that Alerian had checked out of his room that morning. Jude had attempted to track him, but the trail had gone cold next to the river just outside the hotel. Now we had two superpowerful creatures missing in action on my watch.

  They might be holed up somewhere together, plotting, as Nathaniel and Beezle suspected.

  Or they might have been taken out of the picture by some other player, something strong enough to remove two ancient and extremely magical beings.

  Neither option was particularly comforting.

  There was a third option. Alerian and Daharan were off somewhere pursuing their own agendas, and those agendas didn’t necessarily mean destruction for me or anyone else.

  But I had trouble believing that Daharan would go off for more than a day without telling me where he was going and what he was doing. A low-level knot of anxiety had permanently lodged in the back of my brain.

  So there was no Alerian to negotiate with. The shifter seemed to have disappeared and there was no point wasting energy trying to hunt it down. There seemed to be no way to tackle the other problems at the moment, so we waited.

  All of us were exceptionally bad at waiting except for Beezle, of course. Beezle thought he’d died and gone to heaven. He had four people in the house to annoy and all the snacks and TV he wanted. There was no blood and no crises for twenty-four hours, although there were an awful lot of reporters and whatnot lurking outside, making pointed remarks about the wisdom of the mayor’s plan while standing in front of the squid carcass.

  The rest of us were snarling at one another like restless lions. Somehow there
just wasn’t enough space in the apartment for an angel, a werewolf and a couple of mixed-bloods with too much power and nowhere to put it.

  Beezle spent plenty of time on the computer. By Thursday night he reported that Jack had posted an extremely detailed account of what he encountered at my home and far too many details about the shifter itself. He thankfully spared me the stress of identifying my house as the site of the murder, but I was still pretty sure that he wasn’t going to survive much longer if he kept doing stuff like that. Once the shifter’s master got word of Jack’s report, the blogger would be counting the remainder of his life in minutes rather than days.

  By Friday afternoon it was almost a relief to be packing for Lucifer’s wedding. It freed me from the tension of waiting for something to happen—waiting for Daharan to return, waiting for Alerian to appear, waiting for the shifter to attack, waiting for the police to show up to take me away to their camp for magical creatures. Now I had something to focus my energy on.

  Beezle flew into the bedroom and landed on the dresser as I threw things into a suitcase.

  “What are you packing?” he asked, disgust evident in his tone.

  I pointed at the various articles of clothing I’d put in the case. “Little black dress. Heels. Second-nicest dress for whatever you do the night before a wedding.”

  “Dress rehearsal,” Beezle said. “The dresses are cheap and they look it. And I see you’ve also packed your crummy jeans and black T-shirts. Why can’t you ever shop for anything new?”

  “Kind of busy saving the world,” I said, nettled.

  “Buffy saved the world all the time and she always had leather pants and kick-ass boots,” Beezle said.

  “Buffy had a stylist,” I said. “And apparently she had money that I don’t have. I don’t have the magic to make new clothes the way Daharan and Puck can, but I think I figured out how to make the belly part stretchy enough to fit.”

  “You know, you probably do have money,” Beezle said. “Azazel died. You were his heir. Sooner or later a lawyer is going to show up at the door with a big check and some papers for you to sign.”