Black Heart bw-3

by Christina Henry

  I exerted more power, more will, and all I succeeded in doing was making myself sweaty and frustrated.

  “Just where in hell did you send me, Nathaniel?” I asked aloud.

  So I couldn’t create a portal. That didn’t mean that there wasn’t an existing portal somewhere on this world. Every world had an escape hatch. I just had to find it.

  I could wander aimlessly until I bumped into it. Or I could use a tracking spell to zero in on its location. The only trouble was I had no idea how large this world was. I could expend a lot of energy on finding the portal and then discover that I was too weak to get there.

  I was already past the point of extreme hunger and was moving into that place where I was so hungry I couldn’t feel it. If I ate more than a couple of bites of anything at the moment, it would just make me feel sick. This was really bad, because I thought that my baby was eating up more than the usual amount of resources. My clothes weren’t flapping on me yet, but it wouldn’t be long before they were.

  My priority was still to find edible food and water. But if there was a portal nearby, I could go directly there and eat when I got home. After I defeated the Retrievers. Or not.

  Hunger and sleep deprivation were making me scattered. I made a concerted effort to pull myself together. Find the nearest portal. Make an action plan after that.

  Using the tracking spell was going to be pretty distracting, so I needed to find a semi-safe place to close my eyes. I flew back to the tree where I’d napped earlier. I’d slept there for several hours without disturbance, so it seemed my best option. I settled down in my perch and tried to ignore my growling stomach.

  Once, when Gabriel and Beezle had gone missing, I’d thrown a net of power over an alley and found a permanent portal in the middle of Chicago. I wanted to do something like that now, but given the potential size of this world, I needed to start small and expand slowly.

  I visualized the net in my mind, imagined it settling over everything I could see. Once I felt I had a good grasp on it I expanded the net out slowly. I deliberately limited the parameters of the spell to a portal. If I expanded it to include anything with a magical signature, I’d end up getting a lot of signals. Anything with even a touch of magic, including the dragon, the water creatures, and the enchanted stream bank, would show up.

  As the spell spread its fingers slowly outward, I could “see” the shape of the land underneath it. This jungle seemed to go on forever with nothing to interrupt it except the occasional body of water. There were streams, rivers, lakes, waterfalls. The ground undulated with softly rolling hills, and far in the distance, across the forest, were high, rocky peaks.

  All of that water had to go somewhere, so I expected—and found—a huge body that could only be an ocean.

  And still there was no portal.

  For the first time I felt a little twinge like despair. It seemed impossible that I had survived such insane odds over and over again only to die of thirst or starvation on a lonely planet far from home.

  Keep looking, I told myself. Keep going. If you’re not going to fight, you might as well have allowed the water creatures to take you.

  My spell expanded outward, crossing the ocean. I sensed the movement of gigantic animals under the surface, and couldn’t help but think of Alerian. Lucifer’s brother. The water god.

  He’d first appeared as something that looked a lot like a giant squid. I wondered whether Lucifer and Puck had managed to find out what Alerian wanted, why he had woken after such a long time. I wondered whether Chicago would still be there when I managed to get out of here, or if I would return to a smoking ruin.

  Who cared enough to protect it in my absence? Nathaniel? Maybe. But he had sent me to a place that I couldn’t easily leave. He may have done that in order to guarantee my safety, since he knew me well enough to realize I would have second thoughts about running from the Retrievers.

  Or, if I wanted to be suspicious, it was also possible that he had sent me here to get me out of the way without killing me and therefore drawing the wrath of Lucifer down on his head.

  I didn’t want to think of Nathaniel that way. But he belonged to Puck now, and Puck and Lucifer hated each other. If it came down to me or Puck, would Nathaniel choose his reluctant almost-lover, or his father?

  I shook my head to refocus. I couldn’t worry about Nathaniel right now. I had a plan and I needed to stick to it. Find a portal. Find water. Find food. Get the hell out of here ASAP.

  My spell stretched ever outward. The ocean finally ended, and on the other side were more mountains, young ones, with high, jagged peaks unworn by time. Past the mountains, in the foothills, I finally discovered what I was searching for. My escape hatch. The portal.

  I opened my eyes. It was hundreds of miles away, maybe thousands, and past a series of mountains that were probably loaded with peril. How would I ever get there? The flight across the ocean could kill me. On a good day I didn’t have that kind of stamina.

  Well, I had to get there. I would just have to figure out a way. Casting the tracking spell had nearly exhausted me again, but I thought I should try to make some progress in the right direction. I knew there was no food or water for me here, so I decided to fly toward the nearest lake. I just hoped that they weren’t all under the same enchantment as the stream.

  I rose above the trees and headed off in the direction where I’d detected a largish body of water. More time had passed than I’d realized. The moon was already setting, so low in the sky that it appeared to brush the tops of the trees.

  In the distance, off to my left, something huge spread its wings and soared into the sky. The dragon. Or rather, a dragon. There was no guarantee that there was only one dragon in this forest.

  The gigantic animal flew away from me. It seemed not to have noticed me at all. Thank goodness. Maybe my luck was changing. I’d managed to avoid a dragon twice.

  I flew low, just above the tree line. I was keeping a sharp eye below, looking for the lake or a good place to forage for food. I didn’t see any movement or any evidence of creatures beyond the dragon.

  Soon enough I realized I was too tired to keep going. I lowered into a tree, found a comfy-looking branch, and was asleep before I knew it.

  My dreams were tangled things, images of Gabriel and Nathaniel twisted into one body; the dark, lurking menace of the Retrievers; the sight of Alerian rising from Lake Michigan; the feeling that I was drowning when I touched his hand.

  Then Lucifer was there, and behind him Evangeline. He smiled at me as Evangeline rose up, growing taller and taller, her belly huge with child, her shadow threatening to smother the world. I was just an insect to her, something to be smashed.

  I ran and ran, my own belly unwieldy, swollen with my son, but I could never run far enough or fast enough. She was coming for me.

  I woke to a searing pain, and the sensation of falling. There was an arrow embedded in my upper right thigh, and whoever had shot it had knocked me out of the tree. I flapped my wings so I wouldn’t smash into the ground. But they got tangled in something.

  A net.

  I hit the dirt hard and all the breath went out of my lungs. I rolled over, the net twisting in my wings and covering my face. My thigh burned from the arrow embedded in it. I grabbed the net with my hands and tried to set fire to it, but it was made of some kind of flexible metal and all I succeeded in doing was burning myself.

  There was a flurry of movement all around me, soft footsteps in the dirt, voices whispering in some musical language. I struggled inside the net, flopping around, unable to make any headway because of my wings.

  Tall, slim shadows crowded around me, their faces hooded. They all held bows with nocked arrows pointing straight at me.

  I stopped flailing around. I was only tiring myself out anyway. There were six of the figures surrounding me, all of them perfectly still. I knew that if I tried throwing magic, those arrows would fill me up like a pincushion.

  I hate feeling trapped, and I hat
e thinking I have no choices. I had enough obstacles in my way without being kidnapped by some hostile species.

  “What do you want?” I asked, trying to sound like I wasn’t as insanely ticked off as I actually was.

  The hooded figures did not respond.

  “What do you want?” I repeated. I confess that I sounded a lot meaner the second time around.

  Which may have been why one of the figures stepped forward and hit me in the head with his bow.

  Everything faded to black again.

  Someone was calling me.

  Madeline?

  Gabriel? Was that Gabriel’s voice?

  Madeline, be careful. They are not what they seem.

  “Gabriel!” I shouted, or rather, tried to shout.

  My mouth was gagged with a piece of cloth. I was in a low hut that appeared to be constructed of large leaves and long strips of tree branches. The floor was dirt, making the structure little more than a glorified tent.

  My hands and ankles were bound with something cold and metallic. I tested the strength of the bonds to see whether I could pull them apart. I am a lot stronger than an ordinary human, but the bracelets around my wrists had no give. In fact, they seemed to get tighter. My skin chafed against the metal, and I ceased before I tore my wrists up.

  I lay on my right side facing a wall, so I rolled myself to the other side so that I could see the rest of the room. This was not as easy as it seemed, especially when one’s ab muscles were—ahem—underdeveloped. After spending several moments doing an excellent imitation of a fish out of water, I managed to heave myself to my left side.

  The view from this side was less than inspiring. The hut was small and round and just one room. In the center were a fire pit and a small opening at the top of the hut to vent smoke.

  There were no other objects in the room. Several leaves cut into long strips hung over the doorway in a kind of makeshift curtain. I was alone in the hut, but there were surely guards posted outside. Well, I wasn’t going to lie here and wait for them to come for me.

  I still had my wings. I tested them out to see whether my captors had restrained them. Unfortunately, they had. I felt some kind of cord pulling on them. There was no way I’d be able to fly like that. I was trussed up like a Sunday turkey, and I couldn’t move at all unless I flipped over and did an impression of an inchworm.

  Crawling on my belly hardly seemed like an efficient method of escape. But if that was the only option available to me, then that was what I would do. Nobody had ever taken me prisoner before, and I was a little insulted.

  Plus, I had pretty much been spinning my wheels since I’d landed on this stupid planet. Now that I knew where the portal was, I wanted to get to it.

  The first order of business was to get out of these bonds. If I had endless time and energy, I could probably figure out a way to pick the bracelets apart at the molecular level. But I did not have endless time or energy. So I did what I do best.

  I set the hut on fire.

  My palms faced outward even though they were bound behind my back. So all I had to do was call up some fireballs and make sure my hands pointed at the walls.

  Soon the hut was smoking. Very quickly the flames spread, and in a short time the whole hut was ablaze. The heat of the flames got uncomfortably close pretty quickly, and I rolled toward the exit.

  A guard rushed in, his face set in lines of surprise. His hood was pushed back against his neck, and I could see the pointed tips of his ears. Faerie, I thought.

  He looked from the flaming wall to me. I widened my eyes and tried to look helpless. I flopped my feet up and down a couple of times so that he would know what I wanted. He seemed torn for a moment, unsure whether he should douse the fire or save the prisoner.

  I heard shouts and cries outside as the fire spread. The guard seemed to make a decision. He knelt beside me, hovered his hands over the bracelets that bound my ankles and said something in that musical language I’d heard earlier. The bracelets clicked apart, and the guard put his hands under my shoulders to help me to my feet.

  He wasn’t stupid enough to release my hands or my wings, but that was okay. I could work with this. I stumbled as he dragged me out the door, both of us coughing from the smoke that now billowed out of the hut.

  Several faerie were running toward the blazing structure carrying containers of water that sloshed onto the ground. The guard pushed me to one side so that I fell to the ground again. I rolled over and sat up, glaring at him.

  He pointed his finger at me and said something in a firm voice that was likely some variation on, “Stay here. Don’t move.” Then he ran in the direction the other faeries had come from, probably to help with the fire dousing.

  The faeries trying to put out the flames took very little notice of me except to shoot me a quick glance and get on with their business. That suited me fine.

  The hut was isolated from the rest of the village, which appeared to be made up of several structures considerably more elaborate than my prison. The village was set in a large clearing, and my hut was right on the edge of the forest. That also suited me fine.

  I scooted backward on my bottom toward the underbrush. Leaves scraped against my back. I waited until I thought everyone was engaged with the blazing hut, then went a little farther, until I was against a tree. I used the tree as a brace so I could rise to my feet. The wound in my right thigh burned like hell as I put weight on it.

  Then I turned and ran. My hands were bound painfully against my back, and it made running extremely awkward. But I needed to get away. I would figure out how to break the manacles on my wrists later.

  The forest was so thick and dense that the sound of activity in the village was quickly muffled by the foliage. I could hear my own desperate, frantic breathing and my unsubtle crashing through the bush, but no sounds of pursuit.

  The scent of smoke drifted along behind me, clinging to my clothes and burrowing inside my nostrils. I don’t think I ran for very long, but after a while I was wiped out. My body was losing energy fast. I just couldn’t keep up with the constant exhaustion and hunger and fear anymore. With every day that passed, my baby got bigger, using more and more of my resources. I was supposed to be eating chips and dip on the couch, not running for my life from creatures that intended me harm—again.

  I wasn’t really paying attention to where I was going. I was just trying to get as far away from the faerie as possible.

  So, naturally, I stumbled into the dragon.

  3

  I BARRELED THROUGH A PARTICULARLY ROUGH PATCH of brush that was full of tangled pricker branches. I fought my way through the thorns tearing at my face and arms, and finally I was out.

  And there he was.

  The dragon was sleeping, curled up like a cat in a small clearing. His tail was wrapped around the front of his body, which was so much more massive than I’d realized. He was the size of three city buses lined up with three more stacked on top. And that didn’t even count the length of the coiled tail, or the triangular spike that protruded from his back.

  His face was long, the bones beneath the scaled skin sharply defined. The closed eyes were huge, easily the size of my head. I already knew it could fly, and breathe fire. I wondered what else it could do.

  It was a plain miracle that I hadn’t woken it up by crashing through the bushes like that. Maybe it was confident enough in its superiority as the dominant predator in the forest that it didn’t need to stir just because it heard a little human noise.

  I didn’t want to go backward into the thorns, so I’d have to go around the dragon. I crept slowly to the right, toward the base of the tail. I figured if the dragon woke up and attacked, I’d be farther away from its mouth and the inevitable fire, and hopefully more likely to survive.

  I kept well away from the creature, leaving several feet between it and me. I just had to get through this clearing. And then get my hands and wings unbound. And then fly thousands of miles to the portal. No problem.

/>   The dragon’s tail shifted, uncoiled and landed in front of me. I turned my head slowly, and met the orange eyes of the dragon.

  I went perfectly still.

  The dragon bumped me with its tail in the back of my legs, herding me closer to its head and its immense jaws.

  My mind was a mass of gibbering terror. Everything had finally caught up with me—the stress, the fear, the physical wear and tear. Even if my hands were free, I don’t know whether I could have summoned a spell. I just didn’t have the wherewithal to hold it together anymore. Given the amount of stress I’d been under, it was only surprising that it hadn’t happened sooner.

  I stumbled closer to the dragon, unable to go anywhere else. The animal seemed more curious than anything, but maybe I was just projecting human emotion on a monster in hopes that I wasn’t about to be barbecued. The dragon drew me closer and closer, until my face was level with one eye.

  The pupil was slit and long, like a snake’s. It exhaled noisily, smoke rising from its nostrils. I couldn’t think. I didn’t have a plan, or even a half-assed idea. I couldn’t fly away. I couldn’t do anything except breathe, and hope each breath wasn’t my last.

  The dragon peered at me for a long time. I stared back, mostly because I didn’t know what else to do. And as I stared I felt like I was sinking, sinking into flame, flame hot enough to kill, but it didn’t hurt me.

  The fire was everywhere, dancing on my skin and over my fingers. It consumed me, and it didn’t feel like death. It felt like life.

  I came back to myself, to the dragon’s eye, which now seemed speculative. I leaned toward his face, yearning for something I didn’t understand. The dragon turned its muzzle toward me, nudged me with its nose. Its scales were rough and hot against my skin.

  “I know you,” I whispered. “I know you.”

  The dragon huffed out a smoky breath in response. Then it jerked away from me, bellowing. An arrow was embedded in its neck.