Black City bw-5

by Christina Henry

  “Do not wait too long, or you may find your choices taken from you.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked as we began walking north again. Nothing stirred this close to the lake except for us. It was like Nathaniel and I were the last two people on earth.

  “I am aware that you do not make yourself a priority; nor would you wish to contemplate matters of court politics when there is a larger crisis at hand,” he began.

  “I’m sure you’ve heard what I think of fallen politics even when there’s not an apocalypse going down.”

  Nathaniel nodded, acknowledging the truth of this statement. “However, you cannot think that Lord Lucifer will let you go long without a consort, especially in your current condition.”

  The bars of the cage were closing around me. “Are you saying I’d better choose a partner soon or Lucifer will choose one for me? Are you offering to sacrifice yourself?”

  “You could do far worse than I. J.B. is also an acceptable choice.”

  I raised an eyebrow at him. “Most guys don’t like to talk up the competition when they’re trying to get a girl.”

  Nathaniel shrugged. “J.B. is steadfast. He is both magically powerful and politically well connected. If you married him, you would be somewhat protected from Titania’s wrath.”

  “I notice you only say ‘somewhat’ protected,” I said.

  “You diminished Oberon in front of his queen and the highest court in the faerie kingdom. Whatever the terms of your trial by combat, Titania will not be able to let such an insult stand. But if you marry the king of a lower court, she will not be able to kill you outright. And there are more ways to protect your child from her if you are wed.”

  “You’re not making a real strong case for yourself, pal.”

  “Very well,” Nathaniel said, drawing himself up. “I am the only son of Zerachiel of the Grigori and Cassiel, an angel of the host. I served as the right hand of Azazel for over two thousand years, and I have pledged my fealty to Lord Lucifer, your grandfather. If you were to wed me, you can be assured that I would devote myself to you and the protection of your child.”

  I shook my head at him. “You still don’t get it. Politics and status don’t matter to me.”

  “They should. But that is not all I have to offer,” he said, and then his hand was beneath my coat.

  I stood still, mesmerized by his eyes, by his touch. “I thought we weren’t doing this anymore,” I said, but I didn’t pull away.

  “I did not say that. I said I wanted you to choose. I will use whatever weapon I have to make you choose me.” He smiled, and his smile was so wicked that I almost damned myself then and there just so I could find out what was behind that look.

  He pulled his hand away slowly, and I could think again.

  “Keep walking,” I said raggedly, and he chuckled beneath his breath.

  How could my feelings for one person change so quickly? It wasn’t that long ago that I wanted to kill Nathaniel, and I wouldn’t have shed a single tear if I had. But since we’d joined our powers to create the protective veil over the hospital, it was like I couldn’t stay away from him. What had that spell done to us? In some ways the blending of our magic had felt more intimate than sex, and sex bound people together whether they wanted to be or not. Or…

  I looked at Nathaniel through the corners of my eyes. He seemed calm and self-contained, as usual. Could he have cast a spell on me while we were joined? Could I be drawn to him now because of something artificial he’d planted inside me?

  But you saw inside his heart, a little voice in my head argued.

  That doesn’t mean anything, I argued back. He’s thousands of years old, and much more practiced in duplicity than you are.

  But his duplicity is a front. He’s just playing the game that Lucifer taught him.

  But what if that whole story was just another manipulation to make me believe in him? I was giving myself a headache trying to see all of the angles.

  And then there was the matter of his changeability, his moral fluidity. I never could get a fix on Nathaniel from the start. It always seemed that he was adjusting to the situation, that he would be whatever he thought he should be at the moment. Just like a…

  I looked at him more sharply now, realizing who it was he’d reminded me of as he stood over Focalor’s soldier in the moonlight.

  Puck.

  “Nathaniel, who did you say your father was?” I asked, like I couldn’t remember, like he hadn’t just told me his whole family history.

  “Zerachiel of the Grigori,” Nathaniel said. “But I thought you said you did not care for politics.”

  “Are you certain he’s your father?” I persisted.

  “Have you not seen him at the court? I am the mirror image of my father,” Nathaniel said with a touch of irritation.

  “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  “No. Why the abrupt interest in my family?” he asked.

  “Just curious,” I said, my eyes searching his face for confirmation of my suspicions.

  I couldn’t tell him what I thought without proof. There was one more thing I needed to ask, though.

  “Does Zerachiel have children among the nephilim?” I asked.

  “No,” he said, and there was a real haughtiness to his voice, almost like the old Nathaniel. “My father alone was able to exercise self-restraint in the face of his lust. He knew it was not natural for angels to procreate with human women. It was one of the things Cassiel loved about him. She hated the nephilim children of the other Grigori.”

  “I don’t think so,” I muttered, deciding now wasn’t the time to be offended on behalf of human women.

  From what I knew of angels, they would take any opportunity to spread their seed far and wide, and they had no trouble doing so. Azazel had at least two other children besides me—Antares and an unnamed nephilim. He may have had more.

  On the heels of that disconcerting thought came the further disconcerting thought that another half sibling might show up on my doorstep and try to kill me.

  Stay focused. No need to borrow trouble.

  Lucifer had more children than he could count, especially since it seemed he’d screw anything that stood still long enough. Heck, even Gabriel had gotten me pregnant on the first try.

  What were the chances that Zerachiel had managed to make only one child in thousands of years?

  Pretty damn slim, I thought.

  It was Titania and Oberon all over again. Puck had come to Titania in the guise of Oberon to preserve the myth that she was not cuckolding her husband. But genes had a tendency to tell. Titania’s son, Bendith, had Puck’s brilliant blue eyes. There could be no doubt who Bendith’s father was, no matter what Titania and Oberon said.

  Puck could have come to Nathaniel’s mother in the guise of Zerachiel, as he had done to Titania in the form of Oberon. Somehow he’d manipulated the conception so thoroughly that not a trace of Puck’s physical traits had shown up in Nathaniel. But his true nature was still there, underneath the skin, waiting to be unlocked.

  Could Nathaniel really be Puck’s child? If he was, then Puck had done a good job of not betraying the relationship in Titania’s court. He’d acted like he was meeting Nathaniel for the first time.

  Of course, if Lucifer found out—or even suspected—that Puck had a child inside Lucifer’s organization, then Nathaniel’s life wouldn’t be worth squat.

  Maybe all of this was in my head, anyway. I had no proof of my suspicions, and nothing to go on except Nathaniel’s expression in the moonlight.

  But maybe, just maybe, that was why Nathaniel’s mother had been killed. Maybe she hadn’t been plotting against Lucifer, but had simply borne a child that had not been her husband’s. There were plenty of examples in human history of queens whose lives had been forfeit because they had betrayed their kings. The sanctity of the bloodline must always be preserved. That was treason enough if Lucifer was looking for a reason to take revenge on Cassiel.

 
; But Lucifer couldn’t have suspected that Puck was the father of her child.

  And he moved differently, I thought. When he’d killed Focalor’s creature, Nathaniel had moved more quickly than he ever had before. And he could suddenly hear the vampires moving all over the city, a skill I was only just realizing was notable. It wasn’t precisely a smoking gun, but a lot of circumstantial evidence was there.

  None of these abilities had manifested before I’d kissed Nathaniel. Had I somehow unlocked powers he was not even aware of? And would that make him more recognizable to Lucifer as Puck’s child? Had I inadvertently put his life in greater danger?

  “You seem very troubled,” Nathaniel said. “The frown on your face would terrify a demon.”

  I made a concerted effort to unfurrow my brow. “Just worried about the vampire problem.”

  “And about the situation between you and I,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said, because it was sort of true, and because I didn’t want him to ask any more questions. I might betray myself.

  Somehow we’d managed to walk almost to Navy Pier without my noticing or without encountering any monsters. We approached the double-decker bridge that connected the lakefront path to its continuation north of the bridge. The upper deck of the bridge was Lake Shore Drive.

  There was a slight grade here, and we both paused, assessing the situation. The path took a soft turn at the strut that supported the bridge, and the lack of streetlight made the blind turn ominous.

  “Can you hear anything up there?” I asked very quietly.

  “No,” he said. “However, that does not mean something isn’t there.”

  “It doesn’t feel right,” I said, and Nathaniel nodded. “But I can’t tell if it’s because the whole city doesn’t feel right, or because something specifically is wrong up there.”

  “We have no other way of getting home,” Nathaniel said. “We cannot fly. If we go west, we will walk right into the thick of the vampire horde.”

  I looked dubiously at the river below. “Swim in the very cold water?”

  Nathaniel shook his head. “I think it would be very unwise to get into the water at this time. I have noticed the lake is changing.”

  I’d been too wrapped up in my thoughts to notice anything special about the lake. Now I observed that a light, phosphorescent fog rose above the surface as far as the eye could see.

  “That can’t be good,” I said.

  “Something is awakening. Something ancient,” Nathaniel said, and it was almost as if he were in a trance. “I can feel it in the back of my mind.”

  “And is this ability to feel primeval creatures in your mind a new thing?” I asked casually.

  Nathaniel frowned and looked at me. “I have never sensed its presence before.”

  Great. More new powers. “Handy that you can now,” I said quickly, before he thought too deeply about why. “So we don’t want to jump in the river, as I’m assuming whatever’s in the lake would not be impeded by the locks.”

  “The creature gives an impression of great size.”

  “That would be ‘no,’ then. The bridge it is.” I drew my sword, and Nathaniel followed suit.

  We approached the bridge slowly. As the girders rose above us, it was hard not to feel like we were being enclosed in a cave. Lower Wacker was to our left, and connected both Lake Shore Drive and Wacker Drive via ramps that were just south of us.

  Lake Shore Drive was silent above, a cemetery of abandoned cars. Strangely, there was only one vehicle on our level—a yellow cab. It looked like the driver had simply stopped in the middle of the street and jumped out.

  There was a dark stain in the road beside the open door of the car. It might not have been blood. It might have been an oil stain. A really big oil stain.

  The wind picked up and blew my hair in front of my eyes, and that distracted me for a second. I touched my hair, which Chloe had neatened into a pixie cut for me only last week. Now my curls brushed against my jawline.

  “Nathaniel, my hair grew back,” I said, and looked down at the missing fingers that had so recently reemerged. The scabs on my back itched.

  “Hmmm?” Nathaniel said. He was scanning the area for threats, which was probably the smart thing to do.

  “My hair grew back. And my fingers grew back.” And you have powers that you never had before. My conviction that something had fundamentally changed inside both of us during the spell was getting stronger by the moment.

  Nathaniel stopped and focused on me. His eyes widened as he took in my new hairstyle. “Your wings…”

  “I thought of that, too,” I said. “But so far my back is just itchy.”

  We were about halfway across the bridge. A metal fence separated us from the river below. I couldn’t see anything lurking in the shadows ahead, or above.

  I wasn’t really thinking about the possibility of something coming up from below. So when the vampire struck, neither Nathaniel nor I was prepared.

  7

  THE VAMPIRE’S ARMS CURVED OVER THE FENCE AND took me off my feet before I had half a chance to think. Before I knew it the vamp had bound me tight to its side with a fiercely strong grip and nestled me against its cold body. I couldn’t move my arms. The world stank of blood and meat, and the vampire chittered wildly, sounding like an insect.

  It was skittering upside down on the underside of the lower deck of the bridge. I faced downward, but I couldn’t see anything except the blood-soaked jaws of the vampire. My head and stomach whirled. Nausea was an inevitability. I was already exhausted, but I had nothing in my stomach to throw up. I was plastered to the side of a vampire, gagging on my own bile.

  I’d dropped my sword on the bridge—I’d heard it clatter on the pavement—and my magic was still burned out and useless.

  Then there was a tremendous roar of rage, and the whole bridge shook. The vampire paused, the way spiders will when they know they’re about to get crushed under somebody’s heel. I could see nothing, but there was a sound of cracking pavement, and chunks of street smashed into me.

  There was the ozone smell of nightfire. The vampire screamed, started to fall. I was falling, too, and then Nathaniel’s hand was somehow wrapped in my coat, holding me fast while the vampire descended into the river below. He pulled through the hole he’d smashed and rolled me into his arms.

  “That was close,” I said, my voice muffled. My face was pressed against his bare chest.

  He didn’t say anything. He just held me tight. It might have been pleasant under another circumstance, but I couldn’t move my arms and it was a little difficult to breathe.

  “Nathaniel,” I said. “Nathaniel! I need oxygen.”

  He finally released me, and I took several deep lungfuls of air.

  “I should have been more cautious,” he said. “I am sorry.”

  “Are you apologizing for not predicting the unpredictable?” I said. “I wasn’t looking for the vampire under the bridge, either. Although I probably should have been, given that I encounter monsters with abnormal frequency.”

  “I feel like a fool,” Nathaniel said. “I had only just declared myself to you. I’d pronounced that I would protect you and your child, and a monster stole you from beneath my nose.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up about it. It happens to me all the time. You know what’s weird, though? Why didn’t the vampire just eat me right away?”

  “Perhaps it had gorged itself earlier and was planning on saving you for another meal,” Nathaniel said.

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. Don’t you think it would have at least drained me a little so I would be more compliant? It seemed it wanted to take me somewhere.”

  “To its master, perhaps?” Nathaniel asked.

  “That would be logical. If it was fetching me for a higher-ranking vampire, then it probably wouldn’t want to offend its boss by taking my blood.”

  “Which then begs the question of why the vampire wanted you specifically.”

  “Ye
ah. That’s not really a question I’d enjoy answering. I’m sure I won’t like the result, whatever it is.” I looked around. “Where’s my sword?”

  “There,” Nathaniel said, pointing back toward the place where the vampire had grabbed me. “I could not lift it. It would not allow me to touch it.”

  “But you gave me that sword,” I said. “It belonged to your father.”

  “The sword seems to have given itself to you completely.”

  Or maybe the sword of Lucifer recognized the blood of the Morningstar’s sworn enemy, but I wasn’t going to say that. Not yet, anyway. Not until I was 100 percent sure—but I was getting there. I wondered how Nathaniel would react if I was right. It might unhinge him. He put a lot of stock in the quality of his bloodline.

  I fetched the sword, and then jogged back to Nathaniel. “Let’s get home.”

  There was the distinct click of a safety being released behind us.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said.

  We turned around slowly to face Bryson’s furious glare. He held a semiautomatic pistol, and it was pointed at me.

  “What is your problem?” I asked. “Has it escaped your attention that the city has been overrun by vampires?”

  “Sokolov wants you brought in. So you will be brought in,” Bryson said. “He’s had enough of your defiance.”

  “Does he know you tried to shoot us out of the sky earlier?” I asked, thinking of Nathaniel’s shredded wing, our terrifying fall through the air. “Or am I wanted dead or alive?”

  Bryson smiled briefly. “I am supposed to bring you in alive. But if there were an unfortunate accident, I believe Sokolov would understand.”

  I was suddenly angry, so angry that I didn’t know what to do with all that energy. I was sick to death of being hounded by the shortsighted Agency when there were more important problems at hand.

  My magic leapt to the fore, and my power pulsed through the night.

  Nathaniel put his hand on my shoulder. “Ease down, unless you wish to destroy the bridge while we are still on it.”

  The darkness was filled with light, and it was coming from me.