Black Night

by Christina Henry

  “You’re not putting those on me,” I said softly, and I felt Beezle on my shoulder twitch in surprise. I didn’t look at him. If I did, I would doubt myself, because I was sure he had a what-in-the-four-hells-do-you-think-you’re-doing look on his face.

  “You are to be brought before the queen for judgment,” Ivin shouted.

  “And I’ll go. But you will not treat me like a criminal,” I responded. I wondered if I could make the nightfire scatter, like a shotgun blast. Of course, maybe now was not the time to be contemplating new and exciting ways of using my power.

  “In my eyes you are a criminal. You have trespassed on Amarantha’s kingdom with foul intentions,” Ivin responded.

  I drew my power around me like a cloak, pushed it up and out so that all in the clearing could feel it. I wanted them to know just who they were messing with. All the faeries took a little sidling step backward, not a lot, but just enough for me to know that they felt my magic, and it gave them pause.

  “You will not bind my hands,” I repeated. “You will treat me with all due respect accorded to an ambassador from Lucifer’s kingdom.”

  “I could kill you before you wielded your spell,” Ivin said, and he pulled his bowstring tighter.

  I narrowed my eyes at him and pushed more power into the ball of nightfire that hovered above my palm. “Care to try me?”

  I knew that I put Ivin in a bad position. He was the authority here, a representative of the queen, and it would be difficult for him to back down in front of his men. On the other hand, my sympathy only went so far. I had enough sense to know that I needed to come to the queen on my own terms or else she would never respect me.

  Everyone in the clearing was still. Ivin and I had our eyes locked on each other, each waiting for the other to make a move. The faerie who had approached me with the vine cord seemed to be holding his breath. I wanted to look at Nathaniel, to see if he would help me if it came down to a firefight, but I didn’t want to release Ivin from my gaze.

  A minute passed, two. I readied my power. He wasn’t going to give in. I wondered how many of them I could take down, and if I could avoid ending up looking like a pincushion filled with arrows.

  Ivin abruptly dropped his bow. The other faeries paused a moment, as if in astonishment, and then dropped their weapons to their sides.

  He gave me a little bow. “Welcome to the kingdom of Queen Amarantha, Ambassador Black. We would be happy to escort you to our queen.”

  I closed my hand and the ball of nightfire disappeared. I gave Ivin a regal nod. “Would you please unbind the hands of my escort?”

  Ivin looked like it would pain him to do such a thing, but since he’d already embarked down this path he had to see it through. He nodded at one of the other faeries and the cord on Nathaniel’s wrists was cut. Nathaniel gave the faerie who had fought him in the woods a look of venom. If I were that guy, I would avoid being caught alone at night by Nathaniel.

  Nathaniel came to my side. The leader stepped around us, another faerie next to him, and indicated that we should follow them through the woods. We walked behind them in silence.

  Even though Ivin had spoken the correct words and released Nathaniel, it still felt like we were prisoners. Two faeries walked in front of us, one behind and one on either side. Their weapons had been returned to their backs but all five faeries were tense and watchful. It was clear that they didn’t trust us and that any false move on our part would result in someone getting bloody.

  The terrain did not improve significantly as we moved away from the swamp. The woods became thicker, the trees larger. The way that we followed didn’t really seem like a path. There was no tramped-down dirt to indicate the crossing of many feet. Gigantic roots jutted from the ground; large branches reached into our way. Small bushes with prickly thorns scratched and caught at my clothes.

  The faeries leapt lightly from root to rock, easily avoiding creeping branches and reaching thorns. They seemed to slide through the woods like water. I was more like a stumbling rhinoceros. I tripped over every obstacle, got grabbed by every jutting piece of greenery. After about twenty minutes I was sweating like a pig under my winter overcoat.

  I might technically approach Amarantha like an ambassador, but I was certainly not going to look like one. I don’t generally think of myself as vain or girly, but I was sweaty, bruised and covered in dried mud from head to toe. Nobody wants to appear before a queen like that. I shuddered to think of what my hair looked like.

  We walked for what seemed like an hour. After I’d tripped over my nine hundredth tree root, I decided to break the silence.

  “How much longer?” I asked Ivin.

  He looked back at me. “The court of Queen Amarantha is approximately a day’s walk from here.”

  I stared at him. “A day? Are you crazy? I can’t take a day to walk to court. For chrissakes, Nathaniel and I can fly. Surely there’s a quicker way than walking.”

  “You can fly but we cannot,” he said. “You entered the queen’s kingdom at the very borders of her authority. It is not my fault that you chose to come that way.”

  “Believe me, it’s not a choice I would have made if I had known,” I grumbled. “What about a portal?”

  “We do not have the ability to create portals. That is solely the province of your kind,” he said.

  “Then Nathaniel can make one. This is ridiculous. Do you seriously think that I am going to . . .” I trailed off as the ground beneath me trembled and all the faeries went still. “What is it now?”

  The leader looked alarmed. “We must go now. As quickly as you can, follow me.”

  “What is it?” I asked again, but all the faeries had disappeared into the brush.

  The ground shook. I heard something chittering and clicking in the darkness of the trees. It sounded like several legs thumped on the ground. Dead leaves crackled and twigs snapped as the creature approached. There was a heavy scrape of furred body on bark as it pushed through the woods.

  “That sounds like a—” Beezle began, but I cut him off.

  “Don’t say it. It’s not allowed,” I said, and I pushed my wings out. I have a mild to moderate case of arachnophobia. If that thing was what I thought it was, then I would probably pass out right there and wake up to find myself in a cocoon hanging from a tree. “Come on.”

  Nathaniel and I flew up toward the top canopy of trees, but the branches were tightly woven and it was impossible to get above the tree line. My clothes and wings snagged on everything and my face was horribly scratched after a few minutes.

  The chittering and clicking came closer. Nathaniel looked at me in alarm.

  “We can’t get through,” he said.

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” I muttered. “Beezle, can you squeeze through here and try to get above the trees, maybe find a place where we can fit through?”

  Beezle looked at me doubtfully. “I can try. But how will I direct you from up there? You’ll never hear me, and you certainly won’t be able to see me.”

  Nathaniel broke a small branch off one of the trees. He snapped it in half, muttered a word, and the ends of each branch started to glow.

  “Take this,” he said, handing it to Beezle. “It will send a signal to us and guide us to where you are.”

  “Magical GPS,” Beezle said, and he sounded impressed. “Okay, don’t get eaten by the giant sp—”

  “Don’t say it,” I repeated. “Just go, and be careful.”

  “I’d rather go up than down,” Beezle said, and as he disappeared into the branches, I had to agree.

  The creature-that-shall-not-be-named in the woods seemed to have paused. We still couldn’t see it but it seemed frighteningly close. The air was dense with a strange green miasma that slowly filled the clearing. I wondered if the gas was emanating from the creature, or if it was yet another obstacle generated by the forest for me to deal with. Amarantha had a pretty effective defensive system here in the outlands. I’d probably appreciate it more if h
er system would stop trying to eat me.

  “What do you think?” I asked Nathaniel.

  “I think we should stay as high as possible,” he said grimly.

  “I’m on board with that,” I said. “But I don’t think we should move too far until Beezle . . .”

  I stopped as a wave of dizziness overtook me and I almost fell out of the tree. I rested my head against the bark for a minute, then resecured my grip on the branch I was seated on. It didn’t seem to help. Nausea rose up in my stomach and I gagged, trying not to boot.

  “What is the matter?” Nathaniel asked. His eyes scanned the immediate area. The creature seemed to have either fallen asleep or left, because there wasn’t a sound to be heard.

  Sweat trickled down my face and spine. My T-shirt was uncomfortably wet in a few moments. I folded myself over the branch so that I rested on it from face to belly, my legs straddling it like a horse. I turned my head to one side and tried to breathe through my nose. Unfortunately, breathing seemed to make it worse. My stomach twisted in knots of pain, and my chest felt tight.

  “Are you sick?” Nathaniel asked. He floated down to my side, his face level with mine and his body hanging below as he flapped his wings gently in place.

  I nodded a very tiny nod and closed my eyes. Looking at him hanging there was making me feel sicker.

  He frowned. “It must be this fog. It’s affecting your human body.”

  “Great,” I said through clenched teeth. “As if I don’t have enough to deal with. Now there’s poison gas.”

  “We must get you away from here before it affects your brain,” he said.

  “Bad news,” I said. “My brain’s already affected. It’s doing the tarantella with my stomach.”

  Just then the creature began to move again, and it seemed to be moving a lot faster than it had before. Nathaniel reached for me.

  “Carefully . . . unless . . . you . . . want . . . puke . . . all . . . over . . . your . . . jacket,” I slurred. My tongue felt heavy in my mouth and it was getting harder to think.

  “I will risk it,” he said, and lifted me off the branch. He placed my head on his shoulder like I was a baby and put my arms around his neck. “Wrap your legs around my stomach and don’t let go.”

  “Ooookay.”

  I just wanted to go to sleep. I could hear, in a far and echoey way, the resumed chittering and clacking of the monster in the woods. It just didn’t have any urgency for me anymore. Sleep was the thing. Sleep was good.

  “Madeline, do not go to sleep,” Nathaniel ordered.

  “Tired,” I murmured.

  “Do not go to sleep. You must listen to me. I am your husband.”

  “Not yet, you aren’t,” I said, or maybe I thought it. It was hard to remember how to talk.

  The monster crashed into the clearing. I heard branches breaking and the high-pitched whistle it emitted as it saw us. From my resting place on Nathaniel’s shoulder I could see his eyes grow wide.

  “Hold very tight,” he said, and he let go of me so that his arms were free. I hung off the front of his body like a baby gorilla. “I must attempt to fight this creature.”

  “Is it a giant spider?” I mumbled.

  “Yes,” Nathaniel said, and then he threw a bolt of lightning at it.

  The lightning sizzled as it hit the spider’s skin and the clearing filled with the scent of ozone. The spider screeched in anger and thumped its legs on the ground.

  “Did that help?” I asked.

  “No. Do not let go,” Nathaniel repeated, and he began to try to fly away from the creature.

  Pretty quickly he came up against the same problem that we’d had before—the woods were too dense to fly. He hadn’t made any kind of headway and the creature was coming up on us with alarming speed. I looked over Nathaniel’s shoulder and wished I hadn’t.

  The spider was fourteen feet tall, with long, tufted gray hair and about a million spinning red eyes. I wasn’t going to be able to sleep for weeks if we got out of this alive.

  “Portal?” I asked.

  “The elements here are not correct,” Nathaniel said, turning to face the spider and lowering to the ground. “The trees would suppress it. We need an open clearing.”

  “Where’s Beezle?” I asked, and slipped from his shoulders to the ground. I landed and sprawled at his feet just as the spider came close enough for me to smell the stink of its blood-scented breath.

  “I told you to hold on,” he said, and blasted the spider with nightfire.

  The animal reared back, emitted a high-pitched screech. Its teeth clicked together as it retreated a few feet and hissed at us.

  I looked up at Nathaniel from my prone position in the dirt. Now that we were away from the cloud of green gas, I was feeling a little better. The bands of tightness around my chest loosened and some of the nausea subsided.

  “Nightfire help?” I asked.

  “Apparently not,” Nathaniel said. “It seems to be impervious to magical means of destruction.”

  “A very wise gargoyle recently told me that most things don’t like fire,” I said, and sat up just as the spider made another run at us.

  I pulled up my magic, pushing through the lingering feeling of wrongness from the miasma. Eight legs pounded into the ground, coming closer. I heard Nathaniel muttering to himself, preparing some assault of his own.

  The spider’s crazy whirling eyes were too close. It let out a scream of triumph.

  I pushed the spell through my heartstone and let it fly, the same spell that had destroyed the monster in the swamp. The spider ignited immediately. It howled as it went up in flames, thrashing its burning legs all around the forest. The stink of scorched meat and burned hair was everywhere. Some of the trees caught fire and the area quickly filled with smoke.

  Nathaniel yanked me to my feet and pulled me forcefully away from the smoke and flame. After a few moments of caveman dragging I disentangled myself from his grip, slapping his hands away in irritation.

  “I can walk, for crying out loud.” I couldn’t walk very steadily, but I was sick of being yanked through the flora.

  Nathaniel gave me a stiff-faced look. “Forgive me. A few moments ago you were helpless and needed me to help save you from the giant spider.”

  I brushed some imaginary lint off my filthy clothes, keeping my eyes down. “Yes. Well. Thanks for that.”

  He put his hand beneath my chin and forced my gaze upward. “Can you never look me in the eye when you are being civil to me?”

  I arched an eyebrow at him and gave him a small grin. “It doesn’t come naturally.”

  He let go of my chin, leaving a little warm spot where his fingers had been. “Perhaps it will one day.”

  We stood there for a moment, staring at each other. Then I became aware of the heat of flame crackling closer.

  “Better move,” I said. “I wonder what the hell happened to Beezle.”

  Nathaniel looked surprised. “I forgot about the gargoyle.”

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out the twig that matched the one he had given Beezle. The end glowed blue.

  “He has found a clearing for us,” Nathaniel said. “This way.”

  He turned to the right and began to cut through the woods. Behind us there was the enormous crash of a tree as it was consumed by fire. I winced.

  “Amarantha is not going to be happy with me,” I said. “First I barbecued two of her best monsters, then I burned down her forest.”

  “Let us worry about Amarantha at another time,” Nathaniel said. “The important thing is to leave this area before we are barbecued ourselves.”

  We hurried through the forest toward Beezle. It seemed to take forever, particularly with the forest burning to the ground behind us. It is not comfortable to feel flames literally licking your heels.

  About ten minutes later we reached an open clearing. Beezle sat on a large, pointed rock that jutted up several feet from the ground. He looked terribly smug.

  “Che
ck it out,” he said. “Forget getting above the tree line. You can set up a portal here and get us straight home.”

  “I’m all for that,” I said, turning to Nathaniel. “Portal us out of here.”

  He gave me a surprised look. “But what of your mission? The faeries in the woods will surely report to Amarantha that you were here and that you left without paying her notice.”

  “Those guys abandoned us,” I said. “And if Amarantha asks why we left, that’s what I’m going to tell her. They took off through the woods and we were stuck dealing with the giant spider. Anyway, excuse me if I’m not too worried about what Amarantha will think right now. The forest is on fire and I want to get out of here.”

  Beezle looked behind us and his eyes widened.

  “What, you just noticed the smoke and the flame?” I asked.

  He glared at me. “Good work, Maddy. You came, you saw, you burned everything to the ground.”

  “You were the one who told me that most monsters don’t like fire.”

  “Children, please,” Nathaniel said. “I cannot concentrate while the two of you are bickering at one another.”

  Beezle and I gave each other identical looks of annoyance while Nathaniel worked his hocus-pocus. I really needed Gabriel to show me how to make a portal. It would definitely be handy for quick getaways.

  A few moments later the portal was up and running, and not a second too soon. The trees that ringed the edge of the clearing had started to come down in a crash of sparks and ash.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing, leaving like this,” Beezle said, his tiny arms wrapped around my neck.

  “I hope I know, too,” I muttered, and stepped inside the portal behind Nathaniel.

  We landed on my back lawn. It was late in the day already and the sun was slanting weakly through the trees on its way down. It would be full dark soon, and another night would pass without Gabriel at home.

  What was I going to do? It didn’t take a genius to know that Lucifer was not going to be happy with me for this. And Amarantha had beheaded Lucifer’s last ambassador just for some lapse of court etiquette. Not only had I jeopardized my mission to court and possibly Nathaniel’s life, but I hadn’t even managed to find a clue as to Gabriel’s whereabouts.