Black Wings

by Christina Henry

  All day she smiled a faraway smile, and her sharp-tongued mother said sharp things to her more than once so that Evangeline would pay attention to her chores. Evangeline would start and remember that she was kneading bread, or stitching a blanket, but after a while she would forget again, and smile her faraway smile, and her mother would have to use her tongue as a lash.

  And all the while that Evangeline remembered her lover, her mother watched her and thought again that she needed to get to the bone-counter sooner rather than later. So after supper was finished, she told Evangeline to wash the stewpot; she was going to the bone-counter. Evangeline hummed a little noise, and her hand moved forgetfully inside the stewpot, and her mother went to the bone-counter with fear in her heart that her daughter may have been lost to her already.

  The bone-counter was a thin brown man with thin white braids and a long thin nose. He sat in front of his hut all day rolling the bones and reading them for the villagers. He knew all of the signs and portents, and whether that year’s crop would be good or bad, or if a woman would birth a boy or a girl, or if the wind might shift and bring the sickness from the Forbidden Lands, as it sometimes did, though not very often anymore.

  He also knew all of the old stories, how a long time ago there had been great, shining cities of stone and metal, and there had been noise and people crammed together, and all of these people were connected by roads. Then one day the Great Powers had grown angry and destroyed all of the cities. There had been a great burst of flame, and a white cloud of ash in the air, and then another, and another. And afterward many people got sick and many people died for many years to come. Evangeline’s mother had seen some of these roads once, when she was young and her family had moved from one village to another. They were cracked and filled with grass and trees, and they had felt strange beneath her feet.

  Evangeline’s mother went straight to the bone-counter’s hut, and did not stop to visit with the other women of the village that she passed, but the women wondered at the look on her face, and began muttering among themselves about the cause. One word passed their lips again and again—“Evangeline.” For all of these women were mothers, and knew that mothers looked that way only when their daughters had made them heartsick.

  The bone-counter sat cross-legged and stern-mouthed, and when he saw Evangeline’s mother coming he knew that the signs he had read that morning were true, though he had prayed otherwise. Evangeline’s mother looked up from her worrying hands and saw the bone-counter’s sad eyes, and fear took root in her, spreading from her heart and hands to her belly and brain and into her knees, and she fell upon them in the dirt before him.

  He told her that he had woken that morning with terror in his mouth, and he had gone to the bones, which had revealed to him a vision of Evangeline enfolded in great dark wings. At this Evangeline’s mother felt the fear in her heart burst and bloom and change. She was gripped by anger and shame that her daughter had seen darkness and welcomed it, thereby putting them all in danger.

  The bone-counter said, “You know what must be done.”

  And Evangeline’s mother nodded, and stood, and went to find strong men to carry the wood.

  In the hut Evangeline dawdled and dreamed and thought of black, burning eyes, and felt the fluttering deep inside, a whisper in her blood. She sighed and put away the stewpot, and as she did she heard his voice in her ear, like a caress, saying, “Come to me. Come to me. Come to me.”

  She spun in circles, arms outstretched, wanting him again, only him, and cried, “Which way?”

  He did not speak again, but she saw in her mind ashand cloud-covered gray mountains, and a twisted tree with white branches clawing at the sky. Evangeline said, “I’m coming to you,” and she pulled the thread from her braids, releasing her black hair, and removed her day dress and shift, and that was how her mother found her, naked and pale and burning as if lit from within by the light of the Morningstar. Her arms were outstretched, and her eyes were closed, and Evangeline’s mother felt shame and rage break upon the surface. She closed one hand around Evangeline’s wrist and Evangeline opened her eyes, and her mother saw gold fire in green depths, and her doom.

  Outside the men stacked the wood on the pyre and the bone-counter said prayers to the Great Powers and the women muttered like magpies and said, “Evangeline,” “Evangeline,” “Evangeline.” They all waited for her mother to bring Evangeline from the hut so they could burn her and purify the land before the crop was tainted. And in their secret hearts they were glad that it was not their daughters who had brought this shameful curse upon the village.

  Then there was a scream, and the smell of smoke and scorched flesh, and from the hut Evangeline’s mother burst forth, her body covered in silver flames. Evangeline followed, her face all angle and bone, and her eyes burning fiercely in their sockets. Though she was thin, so thin, with tiny bird bones in her wrists and ankles and neck, the women shrank from her blazing eyes, but the men saw her white skin and black hair and wanted her. They rushed to grab her, to take her and keep her, and the bone-counter cried out, but their need pulled them to Evangeline. Where they touched her, their hands were lit by silver flame, and soon the air was filled with black smoke and cries of anguish.

  Evangeline walked forward and the crowd parted around her. At the edge of it stood the bone-counter like a strong tree in a battering wind, stony-eyed and grim-jawed. He waved a staff covered in feathers and he spoke words of magic and power to subdue her, but Evangeline did not notice or care. She knew only that she needed to find her lover, and that this man stood in her way.

  She closed her eyes, and those around her breathed a sigh of relief, for her eyes were too terrible and beautiful to look upon for long. She raised her arms to the sky and her face turned up to the rising moon, and the villagers were transfixed by her stillness. The bone-counter whispered his magic words and invoked the Powers and waited for Evangeline to be struck down. And in that stillness came the flapping of wings, thousands of wings, and Evangeline opened her eyes and smiled.

  The creatures came from the sky on black wings, red-eyed and sharp-clawed, and they screamed horrible cries of joy as they closed upon the villagers. The bone-counter had only a moment to wonder why his power had failed him before his tongue was torn from his mouth and his eyes were pulled from their sockets and his belly was split and spilling.

  And Evangeline walked, destruction following in her wake. She did not notice. She did not care. She was looking for someone, and she could not stop walking until he was found.

  Smoke curled from her footsteps, and behind her were screams and flames and rent flesh, but they were distant to her, something already past. She looked ahead.

  The sun scorched the sand and rocks and Evangeline’s bare skin. Her belly rounded and swelled, and her white skin grew brown. She carried a water jug from the village that burned behind her, but even that was only for the child, for she cared nothing of her own discomfort. She swallowed some water, and her lover’s son flapped his wings inside the taut and straining mound of her belly.

  Two thousand miles had passed beneath her feet, and many villages, as she left the green lands and walked into the desert. She walked, searching for her lover, every step bringing her closer to ash- and cloud-covered gray mountains—the Forbidden Lands. Evangeline walked, always hearing his voice in her ear: “Come to me. Come to me. Come to me.” She did not care where her steps led her so long as he was there at the end of it all.

  And then one day she woke to find his voice no longer in her ear, and she looked over the horizon and saw the jagged fingers of a white tree reaching to the sky. Beneath the tree there was a dark shadow haloed in starshine, and Evangeline no longer felt the sand of the desert beneath her feet as she ran. For three days and three nights she ran, the horizon always just out of reach, until on the fourth day great mountains suddenly loomed before her, and there was the tree, with him beside it.

  “I have come to you,” she said.

  His smi
le dazzled like the Morningstar, and his great black wings opened, and Evangeline went into his embrace. He closed his arms around her, and his wings beat around them, and the wings in her belly beat in time, and he lifted her up and carried her away, and she lifted her face to the brightness of his kiss.

  The next morning I woke in my own bed. I’d had a dream, a vivid dream, about a girl called Evangeline, but the memory of it slipped away as I lay in the hot autumn sunshine pouring through my window. Darkness and blazing eyes mixed in my head with a monster and the smell of burnt cinnamon, and fire pouring from my hands.

  Somehow I had survived, and someone had brought me home. That same someone had bathed me, twisted my long black hair into a single braid, put me in a clean nightgown, changed my bedsheets and bandaged the palms of my hands. Since I wasn’t close enough to anyone who could have performed such intimate services for me, I was more than a little freaked out.

  “Beezle!” I shouted. He flew in through the bedroom door so quickly he must have been hovering in the kitchen just outside.

  “Maddy,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

  “Better,” I said, surprised to hear myself say it. I felt . . . rested, more rested than I had felt in a long time. “But how did I get here? Who brought me home?”

  Beezle looked surprised. “No one brought you home. You brought yourself home.”

  “No, I didn’t. I remember someone picking me up and carrying me. I could hear you arguing with him.”

  “With who?”

  “Whoever carried me home, Beezle! Why are you acting like you don’t remember this?”

  “Well,” he said slowly. “Maybe because it didn’t happen?”

  “Who were you talking to, then?”

  He looked affronted. “I don’t talk to any humans except you. And ...”

  “Don’t you think I’d remember coming home, taking a shower, braiding my hair? I never braid my hair.”

  “You did last night. I mean, you did seem pretty out of it, but you told me that you were okay to walk home.”

  “You’re telling me that I got up and walked home and did all of those things?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why are my hands bandaged?”

  “Burns,” Beezle said, and he frowned at my palms as if they offended him.

  “From what?”

  “That ball of fire you conjured up. The burns were there when we got home. You put some cream on them and wrapped them up.”

  I didn’t remember doing any of it, and I was certain I’d heard another voice. My head started to ache as I strained to remember.

  “How did you do that, by the way?” Beezle asked, and his voice sounded funny.

  “Do what?” I asked.

  “Call up nightfire.”

  I stared at him. “Nightfire? What the hell is that?”

  “Funny you should mention hell,” Beezle muttered.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” Beezle said, shaking his head. “Anyway, how did you call it?”

  My brain felt a little fuzzy around the edges. “I have no freaking clue. I didn’t even know that Agents could call nightfire.”

  Strangely, Beezle looked relieved by this pronouncement. “So what happened, then?”

  “I don’t know. That thing was talking about Mom . . . talking about eating her as if she were an hors d’oeuvre. And I just got so angry. All of a sudden I felt all this power build up inside and it hurt me to keep it there, so I let it go. Wait,” I said, remembering why I had been below that overpass in the first place. “Wait. What happened to the monster? To Patrick?”

  “The monster . . . ran away,” Beezle said. There was something about the way he said it that made me think he wasn’t telling me the whole truth. But before I could pursue that line of inquiry, he spoke again. “Patrick was dead, Maddy. He was dead before we even got there.”

  I slumped back onto the pillow and felt tears burn the backs of my eyes. I swiped at my face with an impatient hand. “Did I just leave him? Did I leave his body there?”

  “I don’t think there was much of his body left.”

  I closed my eyes in pain. “Very tactful.”

  “I’m sorry,” he growled, and it looked like he meant it. “But you were out of it. You couldn’t have helped him even if you’d tried.”

  “He was my friend, Beezle. Pretty much my only friend. I can’t believe I would just walk away from him, no matter how ‘out of it’ I was. And why was that thing after him in the first place? It doesn’t make any sense unless ...” Realization dawned. “Unless it was after me, and it used Patrick to get me there. Which would mean he died for me, because of me.”

  Beezle looked at me sternly. “I know what you’re thinking, and you just get it out of your head right now. Your mother charged me with your protection and you are not going haring off to find Patrick’s killer.”

  “That thing didn’t only kill Patrick. It killed my mother. And I’ve spent a lot of years wondering what happened to her, and why no Agent ever came for her soul.”

  “How do you know that no Agent came for her?” Beezle asked, watching me carefully.

  “I checked the Hall of Records. Every dead soul is recorded there, and so is their choice. My mother’s soul isn’t there. No Agent came for her, and if she wandered the Earth, she would have come to me. I know she would have.”

  Beezle looked at me with something like pity in his eyes.

  “Don’t lecture me,” I said, holding up a warning hand. “You loved her, too. It’s the only reason you stayed to watch over me.”

  He looked away and grumbled something.

  “What?”

  “I said, Katherine Black was special.”

  “Yes, she was. And I’m going to find the thing that killed her and Patrick. And when I do, I hope I can call up that nightfire again. Because when I find it, I’m going to make sure it dies screaming.”

  4

  I DRESSED, PULLING ON A PAIR OF FADED BLUE JEANS, a long-sleeved black T-shirt, and a pair of ankle-high black leather boots with chunky treads. My wardrobe mostly consists of jeans, cords, black tops and black shoes. I don’t want to have to think about coordinating anything, so it’s best if all of my clothes are already coordinated when they come out of the closet. Besides, what color is more appropriate for an Agent of death than black?

  I had a soul to pick up at ten forty-three P.M. tomorrow—James Takahashi at the corner of Clark and Belmont. Other than that, I had the next couple of days completely free. Free except for a few niggling little details—like running a credit and background check on Gabriel Angeloscuro, finishing up the recipes for the article on pears that I was writing for a magazine that featured low-fat cooking, checking the Hall of Records for the whereabouts of Patrick’s soul, and finding my mother’s killer. Just an ordinary day’s work.

  I contacted Charlie McGivney, the P.I. who’d agreed to handle the background checks for me. I read him Gabriel’s information from the apartment application. The application was written in a freakishly neat print, almost like a typewriter. Charlie said he’d get back to me in a day or so. One task down.

  I yanked on my black peacoat and called to Beezle, who was doing his broody thing on the mantelpiece again. “I’m going to see J.B.”

  “What for?” he grumbled.

  “So I can find out what happened to Patrick,” I said. “I need a pass from him to get into the Hall of Records.”

  “But you hate J.B., and he hates you, so why should he do you a favor?”

  “I don’t hate him.”

  “Yes, you do,” Beezle insisted.

  “No, I don’t. I just find him to be a little smug. And condescending. And annoying.”

  “And your boss.”

  “That, too,” I said as I stepped to the side window and thought about going to the Main Office. As I pictured the building, my wings sprouted from my back.

  I wasn’t really sure how I would convince J.B. to give
me a pass to the Hall. We hadn’t exactly ended our conversation on a high note the day before. And in addition to all of my other worries, I was still bothered by the fact that he seemed to have at least one Agent under surveillance. Something else to add to my to-do list.

  Lizzie frowned at me when I walked into J.B.’s office. “Do you have an appointment, Maddy?”

  “No, but I’m sure that he will relish the opportunity to shout at me for no apparent reason.”

  “Maddy,” she chided. Lizzie was maybe ten years older than me, and she tended to use every one of those years as an excuse to act vaguely maternal. “You shouldn’t talk that way about Mr. Bennett. He is your supervisor.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said, holding up my hands in surrender. After all, I wasn’t there to give Lizzie a hard time. “Is he in?”

  “I’m sure he can see you,” she said, and announced my presence over the intercom.

  “Send her in,” J.B. barked.

  I tried to put on my nice face. I needed something from J.B., and I wasn’t going to get it from him by giving him an attitude. But then he ruined everything by acting like J.B.

  “I noticed that you haven’t filed your paperwork for the Luccardi incident yet,” he said before I had even finished shutting his office door.

  Paperwork, I thought. I’ll take that paperwork and shove it up your . . .

  I took a deep breath to clear my head. No use letting him make me angry.

  “Patrick is dead, J.B., and I need a pass to get into the Hall of Records.” I hoped that I looked contrite and harmless instead of annoyed and murderous, which was how I generally felt in J.B.’s presence.