Black City (A BLACK WINGS NOVEL)

by Christina Henry

“The faerie who assisted you in Titania and Oberon’s court? The one who came into the house through the jewel?” Nathaniel asked, surprise evident in his voice.

  “He’s no faerie. I don’t know what he is, but he definitely isn’t a faerie.”

  “Whatever he is, I don’t think you should embroil yourself any further into matters of the faerie court.”

  “I haven’t ‘embroiled’ myself in anything,” I said. “The faeries are the ones who came looking for me.”

  Nathaniel acknowledged this with a nod. “Still, curiosity about Puck’s origins is probably not wise.”

  “I know what happened to the cat,” I said.

  “What cat?” Nathaniel asked.

  “You know, curiosity killed the…Never mind. Anyway, I’ve got a feeling Puck’s not going to leave me alone.”

  Nathaniel shook his head. “What is it about you, Madeline? I have never met another creature with such a knack for attracting trouble.”

  “When I figure it out, I’ll let you know,” I said. “I’m really starting to see the attraction of a quiet life.”

  “You will never have a quiet life,” Nathaniel said. “Even if all your other troubles magically disappeared, you would still be Lucifer’s granddaughter. You are the last direct descendant of Evangeline. He will never let you go.”

  Especially now, I thought. Especially now that I was going to have Gabriel’s child. Lucifer would never let such a prize slip through his fingers. Gabriel had been half-angel and half-nephilim, Lucifer’s immediate grandson. I was also related to Lucifer, although more distantly. The Morningstar was not able to resist the call of his own bloodlines, particularly when combined in such an interesting way.

  Northwestern Memorial Hospital was a giant network of buildings just east of Michigan Avenue and south of the Water Tower. We’d decided the easiest way to find Chloe would be to check the computer in any one of the many reception areas throughout the complex. I’d devised a semi-sneaky plan for distracting anyone at the desk.

  We hadn’t anticipated that the hospital would be completely locked down. Security guards were posted at every entrance. All doors and windows were closed tight.

  The four of us stood on the sidewalk, staring through the glass doors. A few hospital personnel rushed back and forth. The guards at the doors appeared ready to snap.

  “Perhaps we can get in from an upper floor?” Nathaniel said.

  I shaded my eyes in the bright sunlight and peered up the face of the building. Movement caught my eye—something blue and gelatinous-looking darting between the windows, attached to the building like Spider-Man.

  “What is that?” I asked, pointing.

  “Gods above and below,” Nathaniel swore. “That is a pix demon. They are scavengers. They feed off the sick, the dying. And where there is one, there are always more. Like rats. They do not usually come out during the day, however.”

  “Must be trying to take advantage of the chaos,” I said.

  “They will not be the only ones,” Nathaniel said.

  I shuddered. Wasn’t it bad enough that vampires were running loose during the day? Did I also have to worry about other, unseen menaces crouching on the outskirts, waiting for things to really fall apart before they pounced? How was I supposed to keep my baby safe when all these thrice-bedamned things were invading my city?

  The pix demon slipped inside a window that looked like it might be cracked open half a centimeter.

  “We can’t let that demon run rampant inside the hospital,” I said.

  Nathaniel scooped me up and we flew to the pix’s point of entry, Samiel and Jude following. Urgency now trumped subtlety, so I blasted the window apart with nightfire and hoped that the falling shards of glass wouldn’t hit anyone below. Cold winter wind blasted into the room.

  The creature crouched over a young woman lying prone in bed. Her eyes were wide and staring. The IV hooked up to her arm dripped fluid into a body that didn’t need it anymore. The heart rate monitor flatlined, sounding an urgent alarm that no one answered.

  The demon looked up as we entered, its face covered in the flesh and blood of the dead girl. It hissed, displaying sharp predator teeth. I blasted it with nightfire before Nathaniel had finished setting me on my feet, but the monster had bounded from the room already.

  “Damn it all,” I swore, and chased it into the hall, the other three following close behind.

  The hallway was empty.

  “Those things are fast,” I said.

  “Yes, and it is doubtless feeding on another victim,” Nathaniel said. “The fact that its own life is in peril will not override its instinct to eat.”

  “Split up and check the rooms,” I said, already moving down the hall.

  Jude barked behind me, and I didn’t need to speak wolf to know what he said.

  “I know; we shouldn’t separate. Nobody leaves this floor, all right? Check the rooms and then meet up by the stairwell.”

  We searched the floor, which seemed to be empty of nurses and doctors as well as pix demons. All the patients on the floor were soundly asleep. Everyone gathered near the stairwell and looked expectantly at me.

  “Is it more likely to go up or down?” I asked Nathaniel.

  “Down, I would think,” he said. “They usually prefer dark places.”

  I stared at the vents in the wall. “Like air ducts?”

  “You are not checking the air ducts,” Nathaniel said. “If you were caught in an enclosed space with more than one of those creatures, they would tear you apart like a pack of piranhas.”

  Yeah, I’m drawing a line there, too, Samiel signed.

  “I wasn’t suggesting I go into the air ducts,” I said, although I’d been thinking that very thing. “I’m just saying that maybe it’s using the air ducts to travel through the building. There would be a lot more screaming if it were running loose in the halls, don’t you think? Especially since everyone is already on edge because of the vampires.”

  “I suppose we could monitor the air ducts, but that seems inefficient,” Nathaniel said.

  “Yeah, it’s so much more efficient to find the pix when it’s already gnawing on someone’s guts,” I said.

  “It is simpler to find it by the suffering of its victims, yes,” Nathaniel acknowledged.

  “Don’t you care that someone has to die to make things easier for you?” I said angrily.

  “I am merely pointing out that this hospital is a warren of hallways and alcoves, and it is not in the least productive for us to hare up and down corridors in search of this demon,” Nathaniel said. “I thought we were here to find Chloe.”

  I took a deep breath because it would not be productive for me to punch him in the face. Sometimes he surprised me with his humanity, but it was times like this I remembered Nathaniel was not human at all. He came from a world where death was meaningless, and the death of an innocent even more so.

  “We are here to find Chloe,” I said evenly. “But it’s not okay for us to let the patients get eaten by a demon when we’re the only ones who can stop it.”

  I’d been vaguely aware of Jude sniffing up and down the hallway as I argued with Nathaniel. He seemed frustrated, and I suspected that he couldn’t get a fix on the demon’s scent.

  “Too many people have passed through here,” I said to Jude, and he barked in acknowledgment.

  “And there is too much sickness in the air,” Nathaniel added.

  Jude barked again, shorter this time, as if he were only reluctantly acknowledging that Nathaniel might be correct about anything.

  “Samiel, why don’t you see if you can get into the computer on this floor and find out where Chloe is,” I said. “I don’t know where all the staff is, but we might as well use their absence to our advantage.”

  Samiel went down the hall to the empty reception area. Nathaniel gave me a look. “And the pix demon?”

  “We keep looking. I don’t care if it takes all day.”

  “It has probably already f
ound another victim.”

  “Then we stop it from getting another one.”

  “What is the point?” Nathaniel said. “What do you think will happen to everyone in this building when the vampires cross the river? Isn’t that why you came for Chloe, why you were so eager to save your friend?”

  “Samiel wants Chloe with him,” I said, trying to ignore the nagging guilt that I’d been suppressing since we’d undertaken this task.

  “And it’s all right to leave everyone else to their fate,” Nathaniel said. “When the hospital is overrun by vampires and all of the helpless, ill and elderly are devoured in their beds, at least the person you care about will be home safe.”

  I did slap him then, my temper running over before I had the chance to stop it. “What would you have me do? I can’t save them all. I don’t even know how to try.”

  “You cannot,” Nathaniel said, grabbing my hand before I hauled off and hit him again. “And you know that I will stay with you, no matter what foolish enterprise you are engaged in. But do not deceive yourself. If you stop the pix demon, you are not saving innocents. You are merely prolonging the final moment of their death.”

  I stared at him, knowing what he said was true, but everything I was inside fought against it.

  “I can’t stand by,” I said, yanking my hand away. “I have to use my gifts to help those who have none.”

  “So you can make yourself feel better? So you can sleep at night?” Nathaniel asked. “So when you close your eyes you can see the grateful face of the person you rescued at the last moment from a demon, never wondering what became of them after you disappeared into a swirl of smoke?”

  “When I close my eyes I see Azazel’s sword cutting out Gabriel’s heart. I see Gabriel falling into the snow, surrounded by his own blood,” I said, my voice hard. “Don’t presume that you know me, or what drives me. If I save someone from a monster only to have them get hit by a bus fifteen minutes later, then at least I did the right thing when I had the opportunity. I wouldn’t walk by a pix demon eating someone just because a vampire might be right behind.”

  “Even if it means you risk your life for no purpose?” Nathaniel asked.

  “You’re not human. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “I have seen plenty of humanity. The vast majority would not help their fellow neighbor unless forced to do so at gunpoint,” Nathaniel said.

  Our argument was interrupted by Samiel’s return. She’s two floors below here.

  I rubbed my forehead, practicality warring with unfinished business. “Samiel, you and Jude go get Chloe and then get out of the building. Nathaniel and I will track down the pix.”

  Samiel looked doubtful. Every time we split up something bad happens.

  “I need to know that the three of you are safe,” I said.

  What about my need to know that you’re safe?

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. “I’ve survived worse than a pix.”

  You died once.

  “And I came back,” I said, giving him a half smile.

  I wouldn’t count on that happening a second time.

  Jude barked in agreement.

  “Please, just get Chloe out and get home. Trust that I can take care of myself.”

  Samiel looked at me for a long moment. Finally, he nodded. I’ll text you when we’re home.

  “Okay,” I said. The world went wobbly for a second, and I realized my eyes were filling. I swallowed hard, willing the tears away. If Samiel thought I was worried, he wouldn’t leave. But I’d had a strange feeling for a moment, the feeling that one of us was not going to make it home.

  Jude nudged my leg with his nose. I kneeled down so I could look him in the eyes. I could see his reluctance as clearly as if he’d shouted it. Jude fancied himself my protector, and he’d never completely trusted Nathaniel.

  “Take care of Samiel and Chloe,” I whispered, and put my arms around his neck, burying my face in his fur. “I will be home soon.”

  He rubbed his nose across my cheek, and then the two of them disappeared into the stairwell. I knelt on the floor, staring after them, hoping I hadn’t made a mistake. Hoping I hadn’t sent them to their deaths.

  “You cannot be responsible for everyone’s lives,” Nathaniel said quietly from behind me.

  I stood and faced him. “That’s what love is. When you love someone you’re responsible for them, and they you. Until you understand that, I’ll never believe you when you say you care about me.”

  “I do understand it,” he said. “But you are the only one that has ever made me feel this way.”

  He seemed bewildered when he said this, like the feeling was some foreign disease that had invaded his body. I was all too aware of the fact that we were alone, and that he was not Gabriel.

  “Let’s kill that demon so we can go home,” I said abruptly. “Beezle will probably have eaten everything in the pantry by now.”

  Nathaniel didn’t say anything else as we silently agreed that further discussion on this topic was just going to make us both uncomfortable.

  We took the stairway to the next level, peering cautiously around the fire door. There was a little more activity here—a nurse moving from room to room, patients being pushed along the corridor by an orderly—but it wasn’t the panicked rushing of folks who’d just seen a vision from their nightmares. I looked at Nathaniel, and he shook his head.

  We skipped the next floor since Jude and Samiel were there, and presumably any monsters would be dispatched by them.

  Nathaniel had dropped the cloak that covered us when we entered the hospital. I understood why. It required a lot of energy to maintain a veil and stay on your guard against demonic attacks. It was doubly hard to keep four people covered.

  The thing was, Nathaniel’s wings were such an essential part of his appearance that I didn’t often think about them. Plus I was little preoccupied with finding the pix demon and not thinking too hard on what Nathaniel had said about my motivations.

  So when we came face-to-face with a security guard on the next floor, I wasn’t thinking about the vampires, or the fact that all the humans were on edge. I wasn’t thinking that Nathaniel would look extremely strange to a normal.

  We pushed through the door, and it was just unfortunate luck that the security guard stood there. And that his weapon was in his hand, and that he was ready to go off at the least provocation.

  I was in front of Nathaniel, and the guard was a few feet in front of me. He turned as soon as he heard activity behind him, and while he was definitely tense, he might not have fired if he hadn’t seen Nathaniel’s wings.

  “What the hell is that thing?” he shouted, and pulled the trigger. His hand was shaking, so his aim probably wasn’t as good as it normally would be. Likely it was the first time he had ever fired his weapon on the job.

  Which was why the bullet hit me instead of Nathaniel. And why Nathaniel blasted the guard with nightfire as I fell to the ground, the bullet tearing through the soft flesh just under the joint of my shoulder, just above my heart. I screamed, not because it hurt but because it was too late for the guard. Nathaniel had killed him before my eyes.

  I could feel the burning path where the bullet had torn through me, the wet stickiness of blood flowing from an open wound.

  “Madeline,” Nathaniel said, already turning to me, falling to his knees beside me, the guard forgotten.

  “What the hell did you do that for?” I shouted. Rather, I wanted to shout, but my voice barely rose above my normal speaking tone.

  Inside me, my baby gave a little flutter, but nothing more. I guess a little physical distress was old news at this point.

  The guard was prone on the ground, a smoking hole where his chest used to be. Farther down the hall behind him, a male doctor in a white lab coat stood frozen in place, his eyes wide.

  Nathaniel scrabbled at my coat, pulled it away from my shoulder so that he could see the blood-soaked mess beneath. My sweater and shirt stuck to the open wound. He
put his hand over the hole where the bullet had entered.

  The warmth of the sun lit my blood, flowed from his hand and through the heart of me, healing the bullet wound as if it had never been. I sat up, still a little woozy. Blood loss is blood loss, whether your wound heals immediately or not. It takes a while to get your strength back if you’ve got anything bigger than a shaving cut.

  The doctor watched us now with speculation instead of fear. Nathaniel had exposed his powers by healing me.

  “What did you kill the guard for?” I hissed as Nathaniel helped me to my feet. I don’t think he yet realized we had an audience.

  “He shot you,” Nathaniel said, frowning.

  “He was scared to death. He didn’t know what he was doing.”

  “He shot you,” Nathaniel repeated.

  I put my hands to my face for a moment. “In point of fact, he was trying to shoot you and got me by accident.”

  “That hardly recommends him,” Nathaniel said.

  “Couldn’t you have stunned him instead of killing him?”

  “I was not contemplating all the angles of the situation,” Nathaniel said, anger in his voice. “I saw someone threatening you and I eliminated the threat. I do not know why we are discussing this in any case. The man is dead. What is done is done.”

  “We’re discussing this,” I said through gritted teeth, “because I don’t want you to do it again.”

  “Duly noted,” Nathaniel said, and then he turned his body so that I was behind him. I stood on tiptoe and peered over his shoulder so I could see what was going on.

  The doctor approached us, his hands held high to show that he was no threat. He stared at Nathaniel in fascination. That fascination was almost as frightening as terror. The doctor looked like he wanted to whisk Nathaniel away and get the angel under a microscope as soon as possible.

  “Do not approach any further,” Nathaniel said, the old arrogance in his voice.

  The doctor stopped walking, dropped his hands to his side. “Who…who are you?”

  “That’s not what you want to know,” I said, moving a little so that the doctor could see me. My voice was hard. Nathaniel wasn’t my favorite person, but I didn’t want anybody getting ideas about turning him into a lab rat. “You want to know what he is.”