Black Lament

by Christina Henry

  Dismayed, I looked at all the paper all over the floor. “You don’t think she took the sheets out of Azazel’s binder, do you?”

  Jude, who had been sniffing around the room, gave a short bark. He stood near a small, two-person card table that Chloe had shoved under a window.

  Azazel’s binder rested on one of the chairs. I opened it up and found it empty.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said, scanning the mess on the floor. “We have to go through all this junk.”

  J.B. sighed. “It’s you, right? Nothing can ever be easy.”

  We spent the next hour or so on our hands and knees, crawling around collecting pieces of paper and sorting them into two piles—“Azazel” and “not Azazel.”

  After a final walk-through we were pretty sure we’d gotten all of the documents. I’d noticed as we were collecting them that Chloe had made oblique notes on several of the pages in purple marker.

  I shoved the papers back through the rings of the binder and shut it. “Let’s bring this home and look it over. I can’t take the smell of this place anymore. Hasn’t she ever heard of disinfectant?”

  I shut off the lights and sent Jude and J.B. outside first so that I could lock the interior door. Not that Chloe would notice if someone broke in, but it seemed like the right thing to do.

  I drifted through the outside door and saw J.B. and Jude waiting for me on the sidewalk.

  We started walking north back to my place. J.B. carried the binder under his arm, and Jude trotted a little bit ahead, sniffing as he went.

  We were on Lincoln, across from the Burrito House and near the public play lot, when Jude stopped.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  He whined, pawing at the metal fence that surrounded the play lot. I reached around him and opened the gate.

  He darted inside, nose pressed to the ground, and crossed between the swings and the slide. The playground was bordered by a high wall that supported the Metra tracks that ran through the neighborhood.

  Jude went right up to the wall, sniffing and whining so that we would follow him. J.B. and I followed, bewildered.

  After a few minutes Jude stopped and barked. He pointed with his nose toward the wall.

  There, inscribed in the metal support, was a tiny symbol—a circle topped by an upside-down V.

  “The sigil of the charcarion demons,” I said.

  Jude barked.

  “This is probably a portal,” I muttered. “But why put it so close to my house? Why risk my finding it?”

  “If it’s a portal, can you open it?” J.B. asked.

  I stared at the symbol. The last time I’d opened a portal like this, I’d found the wolf cubs that had been taken from Wade’s pack. If I went through the portal now, would I find the missing Agents? Would I find Azazel?

  Or was it a trick, a trap planted by Azazel? If I went through the portal, would I find nothing but my own doom?

  I looked down at the tattoo of the coiling snake on my right palm. There was no tingle of magic, no prompting to open the portal.

  Then again, my little parasite had been rather quiet lately. Not that I’d noticed, what with everything else that was going on.

  “Better not try to open it now,” I said finally. “We don’t know where it goes.”

  “It could lead to Chloe,” J.B. said.

  Jude barked.

  “Or it could lead to a nest of charcarion demons,” I said. “We don’t know how long that sigil has been there.”

  “But—” J.B. said.

  “No,” I repeated. “I’ve reached my limit of foolish, impulsive decisions for the last twenty-four hours. Let’s go home and try and see if Chloe left anything useful for us. We know that the sigil is here, so if we don’t come up with any other options, we can always come back to it.”

  “If you don’t want to go through it now, maybe you should seal it,” J.B. said with obvious reluctance. “It’s right next to a playground. What if Azazel decides to send a bunch of demons through during the day when kids are playing here?”

  That was a terrifying thought.

  “I’m not sure I want to risk leaving it open, in that case,” I said.

  “Either we should go through now, or we should seal it,” J.B. said.

  Would I be sealing Chloe and the other Agents behind my spell, never to be found? Could I take that kind of chance?

  Alternatively, could I risk the lives of innocent children who might fall prey to some wild plan of Azazel’s?

  There wasn’t really a choice when I put it in those terms.

  “Stand back,” I said, and lifted my hand to the sigil.

  My tattoo lay quiet on my skin, but I didn’t need its help for this spell anymore. The metal glowed hot and yellow beneath my touch, and when I pulled my hand away the sigil was blackened, closed forever.

  None of us spoke as we continued home. We all knew there was no other real option than to close the portal, but it was hard to feel good about that choice.

  I only hoped that whatever Chloe had discovered in Azazel’s notebooks led us to her and the other Agents, and I wouldn’t have to regret closing the sigil.

  Beezle buzzed into the living room as soon as we walked through the front door.

  “I have been as annoying as I possibly could be. I think Nathaniel wants to kill me, but Bryson hasn’t given up anything interesting yet,” he said.

  “Keep working on him,” I said. “I don’t want to let him go until sunrise.”

  Beezle shrugged. “Okay.”

  He went back downstairs while I settled in at the table with the binder. Jude went into the bathroom and came back out as a human being. He’d taken to keeping a pair of jeans in there.

  I opened the binder and divided the papers into three stacks, one for each of us. I grabbed some yellow legal pads and pencils from the side table and gave one each to Jude and J.B. “Now the fun part begins. Write down any notes that Chloe made and the context, if you can understand it.”

  It was slow and tedious work. Chloe had written a lot of formulas in the margins, and her formulas made as little sense to me as Azazel’s. She’d also written cryptic things like “beam?” and “how to hold it internally?”

  I heard Jude sighing a lot. J.B. just got that fixed, long-suffering look that he usually had after dealing with one of my escapades.

  As I was nearing the end of my pile, I came across a sheet that had a large purple box around the word “SUNSHINE.” Chloe had surrounded this word with many, many more exclamation points than were strictly necessary.

  “Sunshine,” I said, and looked back over my notes. “How to hold it…”

  I thought about Azazel’s own cryptic notes. Blood donors. Vampires. Sunshine.

  “Gods above and below,” I said. “He’s trying to make vampires immune to the sun.”

  “He can’t do that,” Jude scoffed. “Vampires are destroyed by the sun.”

  “He’s doing it,” I said grimly. “Or at least he’s trying.”

  “How would he do something like that?” J.B. asked.

  “I’m not sure, because math is definitely not my strong suit, but I think that he’s trying to inject the power of sunlight into human donors. Then he’s letting the vampires drain the humans.”

  “And over time the vampires will build up an immunity to the sun?” Jude said skeptically.

  “Well, I don’t think it’s worked so far,” I said. “Because we saw the vampires at his mansion. The vampires were getting crisped in the sun, just as they should.”

  “So maybe it’s not possible,” J.B. said. “He’s just wasting his time.”

  “Or maybe,” I said slowly, “he had the wrong kind of donors.”

  “The kidnapped Agents? What would they have that ordinary humans wouldn’t?”

  “Agents’ magic is tied to the dead, right? And vampires are essentially dead,” I said, warming to my theory. “So an Agent’s blood might be better tolerated by a vampire, especially when somet
hing that would normally kill the vamp is running in the blood.”

  “And once vampires had built up an immunity to sunlight, then what?” J.B. said.

  “I think the massacre that we saw today was just a little taste,” I said.

  “Vampires roaming free during the day, terrorizing the city?” Jude asked.

  I nodded. “And since it’s Azazel, you know that’s only the smallest part of the plan. The vampires would probably be a distraction for some bigger splash he’d intended.”

  “If you’re right, then the kidnapped Agents are probably being drained by vampires as we speak,” J.B. said.

  “More importantly, if it works, then Azazel will want more Agents,” I said.

  J.B. stared at me, his green eyes filled with horror. “The whole Agency is at risk.”

  “I told you that the upper management was being shortsighted,” I said. “They need to put some resources into this.”

  J.B. shook his head. “I’ll never convince them.”

  “You have to,” I said. “They don’t want a repeat of what happened with Ramuell and Antares, right? So why would they tolerate their Agents being picked off one by one?”

  “From their point of view, it’s not a problem. If an Agent dies, then the next person in their bloodline will be activated. Dead Agents are less troublesome than missing ones,” he said.

  “They’re going to start having morale issues if they think like that,” I said. “And they won’t be able to threaten every Agent with Bryson or the Retrievers.”

  “The problem is that we have no proof of this,” J.B. said.

  “Sixteen missing Agents at the site of a vampire attack isn’t proof?”

  J.B. shook his head. “You don’t know how stubborn upper management can be.”

  “I’ve got some idea,” I said. “Well, the good news is we know what Azazel’s intentions are.”

  “You think,” Jude said.

  “Let’s just assume I’m right. The bad news is that we still don’t know where he is.”

  “Try Lucifer again?” J.B. asked.

  “I’ve got a feeling he’s not answering his phone for a reason,” I said, but I tried anyway. And got nothing.

  “So it’s the Forbidden Lands, then,” Jude said.

  “Yeah, but not for you,” I said, and pointed to J.B.

  “Why the hell not?” he asked.

  “You’ve got to stay here and try to convince the Agency that other Agents are at risk,” I said. “No matter how unlikely the outcome may be. If we can get the Agency to come around to our side, then we’ll be better prepared for whatever Azazel’s planning.”

  “We can hardly take on an army of vampires with just the five of us,” Jude said.

  “Six, if you count Beezle. And he usually doesn’t show up for the combat situations,” I said pointedly.

  “So the four of you can manage Antares and whatever he’s got hidden in the Forbidden Lands?” J.B. asked.

  “Our options are limited,” I said. “I think it would be better if you were here trying to work on the Agency. Start with Bryson.”

  “Bryson’s been listening to Beezle for the last couple of hours and he hasn’t broke,” J.B. said.

  “Don’t try to break him. Try to reason with him. You’re management. He’s got to respect you.”

  “As a midlevel supervisor, my status is roughly on par with his.”

  “What do you want to do, then? Give up? Watch our colleagues get taken by Azazel and used for vampire food?”

  “No. It’s just…”

  “All the alternatives suck, no matter how we try to play this. If you hang around me long enough, you get used to stuff like that.”

  J.B. smiled briefly. “Let’s go get Bryson, then.”

  We agreed that J.B. would hold Bryson here until the rest of us had safely departed for the Forbidden Lands. After that he could release Bryson or take him elsewhere to try to convince him to help.

  As we went down the stairs I heard Beezle holding forth on the merits of cheese popcorn versus caramel popcorn.

  “Of course, you can always blend the two, à la the famous Chicago mix, but I prefer not to mix my salty and sweet together. You wouldn’t put a doughnut in a bowl of potato chips, would you?”

  Bryson was gagged and tied to an old metal chair that must have been found in the piles of junk. His eyes were glazed over and his jaw set. He looked like a man who’d had a tiny drop of water falling on his forehead continuously for the last couple of hours. Beezle hovered in front of his face, talking endlessly.

  Samiel had dealt with Beezle simply—by not facing him. I’d often thought that the reason he tolerated Beezle so well was because he couldn’t hear. He stood behind the gargoyle, arms crossed, staring at Bryson.

  Nathaniel leaned against the wall to Bryson’s left, and he appeared to be at the end of his rope. He seemed to be contemplating Beezle’s slow demise.

  “That’s enough, Beezle,” I said, and Nathaniel shot me a grateful look.

  Bryson sighed in relief.

  “We’re remanding you into J.B.’s custody,” I said, taking the gag off the Agent. “He’s got some important things to tell you.”

  I jerked my head so that Nathaniel, Samiel and Beezle would follow me.

  “Agent Black,” Bryson called after me.

  “Yes?” I said, turning back. Maybe he’d had a change of heart while listening to Beezle drone.

  “I won’t forget this,” he said, the light of fury burning once again in his eyes.

  I nodded, though my heart sank. I couldn’t care less about Bryson’s threats, but with an attitude like that he’d be impossible to convince. And I was sure that the Agency would be more receptive to Bryson than to J.B. or me.

  Once the rest of the troops were assembled upstairs, I explained what had happened at Chloe’s and at the playground.

  “So the four of us are going after Antares,” I said.

  “What about me?” Beezle asked.

  “I just assumed there was some important TV show you needed to watch, or perhaps you wanted to get into the pantry unhindered,” I said.

  “Like I would miss this,” Beezle said.

  “All aboard for the Forbidden Lands,” I said.

  16

  WE STOOD ON A LONG ROAD WITH A CRACK RUNNING down the center. In the distance were jagged peaks of mountains under flashes of silver lightning. And in the foreground, a giant leafless tree scraping white claws against the sky.

  I’d been here once before, when my crazy many-greats grandmother had brought me here to kill Ariell, Samiel’s mother, who hadn’t been the sanest creature herself.

  I’d died here, too, for a little while. Ramuell had torn my heart out. For a moment I thought I could feel it again, feel his clawed hand pushing through flesh and bone and closing over my beating center. Then I took a deep breath, and let it go. I had to.

  “There’s no other way inside?” I asked Samiel.

  His eyes were bleak. I could tell that he wasn’t reliving happy family memories.

  The Grigori closed all the paths to the nephilim save the way through the tree after they re-bound their children.

  “But Azazel had two nephilim in his mansion,” I said. “So he may have opened another passage.”

  “But do we have time to search for it?” Nathaniel asked.

  I sighed. It was my own reluctance that was keeping us from moving forward. I didn’t have any happy memories of this place, either.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  The air wasn’t as frigid as Chicago’s winter, but it felt significantly less friendly. There had always been a sense of malice in the air here, and as we walked down the barren road, dread settled upon me like a cloak.

  Beezle was tucked inside my coat, only his horns and eyes peeking over the lapel. Even he didn’t have any smart remarks to offer.

  After much loud discussion, we’d decided to go first to the Valley of Sorrows where the nephilim were held. Azazel had a
lready freed at least two nephilim, and there was a fair chance that he was using that cave as the base of his operations. I’d argued that it was far too obvious a place, but Jude had pointed out that at least it was somewhere to start, and better than roaming aimlessly over the mountains.

  So to the cave of the nephilim we would go.

  The tree loomed larger against the sky as we got closer and closer. As we approached it, sweat trickled down the back of my neck. I did not want to go in there again.

  No one spoke. I think we all could feel the menace of this place, and wanted to avoid attracting its attention.

  After a long time, we reached the tree. Samiel opened the secret door, and we went into the underground tunnel. I was heartily sick of tunnels and passages and secret ways, especially after my assorted experiences with the fae. There had never been anything good waiting for me at the end of a tunnel. The last time I’d walked through this tunnel, I’d been following the ghost of Evangeline, and she’d left me alone when I reached the door to the cave of the nephilim.

  The door was before us sooner than I wanted it to be. It was some heavy metal, warm and burnished like ancient gold. There was no knob but there were seven bolts to be drawn.

  I reached for the top bolt. Jude stayed my hand.

  “Wait,” he whispered, his head cocked to one side. “I hear something.”

  I couldn’t hear anything except the sound of my own breath, and the rustling of Beezle shifting inside my coat.

  The tunnel had an odd hushed quality about it, like it was soundproofed. But a wolf could hear for miles.

  “The nephilim?” I asked in a low voice.

  He shook his head. “Whatever it is, there are a lot of them. Hundreds of them.”

  We all stared at the door.

  “It can’t be more nephilim,” I said, horrified at the thought. “The nephilim are the children of Grigori and human women.”

  “How do you know Azazel hasn’t been breeding more?” Beezle asked quietly.

  I really hoped that wasn’t true. I was sure that if Azazel had been breeding nephilim, then the human women who birthed them were not willing participants. The thought made me feel sick.

  “We’ve got to see what’s in there,” I said.