“There’s going to be a reckoning for that,” Beezle said, and I knew he was referring to the revelation of Bendith’s parentage.
“Isn’t there always?” I said sourly.
We walked until we came to the edge of the forest. Chloe sat down on a nearby log, dislodging several small insects as she did so. Ahead of us was an open field of grass, and beyond it, green foothills that led up to sharp mountains. The sky was blue; the sun was bright. Everywhere except…
“Hey, look there,” I said, pointing to the topmost peak of the mountains ahead of us. At the very tip of the snowcapped mountain the bright blue sky was smudged with a patch of gray.
Chloe squinted. “What am I supposed to be looking at here?”
“The way out,” Beezle said, clapping me on the shoulder with his little hand. “Not bad.”
“How do you know that little dirty smudge is the way out and not another illusion?” she asked.
“Because when we arrived here the first time with Lucifer, we were in a kind of no-man’s-land, a place that was cold and gray,” I said.
“But how do you know it’s not an illusion?” Chloe persisted.
“I don’t,” I said. “I have to believe that it’s not.”
“I’m really amazed that you’ve survived as long as you have, with logic like that at work,” she said.
“Everyone underestimates me,” I replied. “I’m not offended.”
“And besides,” Beezle said. “I can tell that’s not an illusion with my special gargoyle powers.”
“I know you are tired,” Nathaniel said, “but—”
“We should keep moving, I know,” I said. I looked at J.B., sleeping on a tree root. “We’re not going to be able to fly as long as J.B.’s knocked out. It would be hard for Samiel to carry Jude and J.B.”
“I told you, you can’t fly anyway,” Beezle said.
“Won’t it be safe to fly once we get away from the forest?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Absolutely not. They don’t like anything in their territory. I was just lucky that I saw the nest before I got too high.”
“What nest?” Chloe asked. “What’s up there?”
“Harpies,” Beezle said.
Nathaniel looked sharply upward. “Harpies. Are you sure?”
Beezle nodded. “I am definitely sure.”
“How many?”
“I saw eggs,” Beezle said.
“Then they’re breeding,” Nathaniel said. “There could be hundreds of them up there, and it would only take one or two to cause us considerable distress.”
“Harpies are myths from the Greeks,” Chloe said. “What are they doing in a faerie forest?”
“Titania must have made a deal with them,” Nathaniel said. “And if the gargoyle is correct, then we most certainly cannot fly. If even one of the harpies sees or senses us in the air, then they will consider us fair game.”
“Yay, harpies,” Chloe said, standing up. “Let’s walk now.”
Samiel bent to pick up J.B. I went to his side for a moment, put my hand on J.B.’s head. He was cool to the touch.
“No fever,” I said. “There’s that, at least.”
Nathaniel came up beside me, touched my shoulder. “His body simply needs time to recover.”
I nodded, but I knew I wouldn’t feel better until J.B. opened his eyes. Jude trotted silently ahead, and we all fell back into our positions.
The thing about mountains is that it’s hard to tell how far away they are. I don’t know how far or how long we walked with the sun beating down on us and no food or water. All I know is that after a while I started to feel woozy. And then a while after that everything went black.
I woke up with my head in Nathaniel’s lap and a mouth full of dirt. I turned to one side and tried to spit, but my mouth was too dry, and I gagged. Beezle sat on my chest with a worried expression on his face. Jude sat beside my arm, still in wolf form, his tongue hanging out in deference to the heat. Samiel and Chloe were standing, leaning on each other for support. J.B. was on the ground beside me.
“This is taking too long,” Beezle said. “You’re not going to make it to those mountains.”
“I can do it,” I said through bone-dry lips.
“Yeah, and I’m an Australian supermodel,” Beezle said. “Look, we’re on a deadline with Therion as it is. Remember the vampire invasion of your hometown? We can’t spend the whole three days messing around in the faerie kingdom. We have to get out of here so that you can get home and kick some vampire butt so that takeout can be restored.”
He was right. I knew he was right. We just couldn’t walk fast enough. Samiel was strong, but he couldn’t carry J.B. indefinitely. Chloe was weakened from her ordeal in Azazel’s mansion, and I was pregnant. Jude and Nathaniel could probably make it, but the rest of us wouldn’t.
“What do you suggest we do, then?” I said.
Beezle looked grim.
“We’re going to have to fly.”
12
“WHAT ABOUT THE HARPIES?” I ASKED. “AND JUDE AND J.B.?”
“I can carry you and the wolf,” Nathaniel said.
I shook my head. “That’s silly. We’ll need you to be able to fight if the harpies come after us.”
“When the harpies come after us, you mean,” Chloe said. “But I can carry Jude, anyway.”
Samiel shook his head. No, you can’t. You aren’t nearly strong enough.
Chloe flexed her biceps. “I lift weights, you know.”
“You can’t carry a two-hundred-twenty-pound wolf through the air no matter how much you can bench-press,” I said. “I can’t, either, and I’m less human than you are.”
“What if we wake up J.B.?” Beezle said.
“He’s traumatized. And healing,” I said, sitting up slowly and trying to wipe the dirt out of my mouth. “How are we supposed to do that?”
“Well, we are in faerie land,” Beezle said. “How are sleeping princes usually woken?”
I didn’t have to see Nathaniel to know he was scowling. I stood up to put more distance between us.
“Look,” I said, my face heating. “In stories it’s the princess that’s woken by love’s first kiss. J.B. and I don’t love each other.”
“Yes, you do,” Beezle said seriously. “Oh, there’s a whole lot of human stupidity and some other stuff in the way, but at the core of it you love each other. If you didn’t love him, you would have left him here and dealt with the vampires first.”
“J.B. is my friend,” I said. “I wouldn’t leave any friend in Titania’s hands.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” Beezle said.
Samiel tapped my shoulder so I would look at him. It’s worth a try. It doesn’t mean you don’t love Gabriel.
Samiel’s consent made me feel even more embarrassed and confused.
“I don’t…I can’t…” I said.
“We’ll all give you some privacy if it makes you feel better,” Beezle said. “But the only way we’re going to get out of here is to fly. And the only way to fly is if J.B. can move under his own power.”
“And what if this doesn’t work, smarty-pants?” I asked.
“Then we’ll try something else,” Beezle said. “But I’m betting it will work. And you know I’m always right.”
“I don’t know how you fit such a huge ego in that tiny head,” I said.
“The same way I can fit a pound of chicken wings in this tiny body,” Beezle said. “Mad skillz.”
“Okay, fine, I’ll try it,” I said. My cheeks were on fire, and I couldn’t look directly at Nathaniel. I pointed toward the mountain. “Everyone just walk that way for a while.”
“How far?” Beezle asked.
“Just keep walking until either I call you or we catch up,” I said. “I am definitely not doing this with an audience.”
“You know, Jude can hear everything for about a mile in any direction,” Beezle said. “Privacy is really an illusion.”
“Just g
o!” I said.
“All right, all right. No need to get huffy,” Beezle said.
They all left except Nathaniel, who stood there for a moment while I determinedly stared at the ground.
“This doesn’t mean I’m choosing,” I said finally, looking up at him.
He looked back at me with Puck’s eyes. It was disconcerting to see those eyes in Nathaniel’s face.
He said nothing, just nodded and turned to follow the others.
J.B. lay still on the ground. His eyes were closed, his breath smooth and even. I’d been so focused on his injuries that I hadn’t noticed his clothes. Now I realized that he was dressed for work in his favorite gray pants and a blue button-down. Both pieces were torn and liberally stained with blood, and his socks and shoes were gone.
He looked so unlike himself, lying there in the grass. J.B. was always moving, always shouting, always calculating the solution to the next problem. He wasn’t a beaten thing, a broken toy that Titania had thrown away. He was J.B., and Beezle was right. I did love him.
I just didn’t know what kind of love it was, and Gabriel’s shadow was still with me. It was too soon to make any kind of decision. It felt like circumstance was forcing me to move on, to choose. I didn’t want to choose. I wanted to do things in my own time and in my own way, the same way I did everything else.
Nathaniel or J.B. J.B. or Nathaniel. Part of me just wanted to not have to choose at all, to have Gabriel back.
I knelt beside J.B., brushed my hand over his forehead. I didn’t have to decide now. I just needed to wake him up, to get us all home safely.
I bent closer, until I could feel his slow exhalations on my mouth. This had to work.
“Wake up, J.B.,” I said, and I kissed him.
His lips were warm but yielding, and it seemed like it wasn’t going to happen. And if I kissed J.B. for nothing, then I was going to hide all the popcorn from Beezle for the next month.
J.B. groaned, and shifted in the dirt. I pulled away, grabbing his shoulders.
“J.B.?” I said, shaking him a little.
He opened his eyes. They were bleary, and it took a second for him to focus.
“Maddy?” he said. “Were you kissing me?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Now you kiss me? While I’m unconscious?”
“Beezle said it was the only way to wake you up.”
“I’m going to buy that gargoyle all the popcorn he can eat,” J.B. said.
His arms wrapped around my waist, pulled me on top of him and rolled us over until I was underneath him. He did this so fast that I didn’t really have time to process what was happening.
“Um, J.B.?” I said.
“Shh,” he said. “I was asleep for the last one.”
And then he kissed me. The sun shone down on us, warm and comforting. The grass rustled in the wind. All that was between us was breath and air, and I felt a sweet peace, one I hadn’t felt in a long time.
There was no madness of magic and desire like there was when I was with Nathaniel. J.B. didn’t push me. He didn’t ask for more than I could give.
He kissed me one last time, and then lifted his head. I opened my eyes to look at him. He brushed his hand through my hair.
“Your hair grew back,” he said. “How long was I gone?”
“Only a day,” I said, and pressed his shoulders so that he would get off me.
“I imagine there’s an interesting story about why your hair is back, then,” he said.
“Yeah, interesting,” I said. And I have no intention of ever telling it to you.
He rolled to the side and then to his feet. He shielded his eyes from the sun, squinting in the direction the others had gone.
“Is that Chloe?” he asked. “I can see a purple blob kind of floating above the grass.”
“Yeah, and Jude and Samiel and Nathaniel and Beezle,” I said, standing up and brushing dirt from my pants.
“Where did you get those pants? I never pegged you for the leather type. Although I like them,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively and peeking around me. “They make your backside look good.”
I punched him in the shoulder. “Just because I kissed you does not mean you get to be a lech.”
“Well, what does it mean?” he said.
“Right now, not much. This isn’t the time for a heart-to-heart,” I said. “We took you from Titania but we’ve got no way of leaving this place until we can get to the borders of her lands and call for Lucifer’s help. We can’t walk there without killing a lot of time, and time is something we don’t have much of.”
I told him about Therion’s message and what was happening in Chicago. Then I told him about the harpies.
“Are you out of your mind?” J.B. asked. “If the harpies detect us, they will rip us limb from limb and eat us, and not in that order.”
“We’re pretty much out of options,” I said. “If we stay here, Titania will rip us limb from limb and then feed us to one of her pets.”
He rubbed his forehead. “Why is it your plans are always insane?”
“Maybe because we’re always in insane circumstances,” I said. I saw the others approaching us. “Listen, J.B. Titania punished you because of me.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“No,” I said. “I can never make it up to you.”
He looked down at himself. “You seem to have already, since my previously broken parts are no longer broken.”
“J.B., she tortured you,” I said. “That doesn’t just go away.”
“Don’t worry about me, Black. I’ve got a sturdy constitution,” he said.
Beezle landed on my shoulder. “Told you it would work.”
“Are you going to be insufferable now?” I said. I was a little annoyed that J.B. wasn’t taking his trauma and my guilt about it very seriously.
“No more than usual,” Beezle said. “So, how are we going to do this, then?”
“I will carry Madeline,” Nathaniel said. “And Samiel can carry Jude.”
“I can carry Maddy,” J.B. said.
“You were just unconscious a second ago,” I said. “And you can hardly see without your glasses.”
“I’m fine,” he said in that tone that men get when you imply that their manliness might be less than optimal.
“We are not going to argue about this,” I said. “You’re still recovering. All I want you to do is get yourself safely to the top of that mountain.”
He screwed up his face. I knew he couldn’t see the point that I was referring to, and there was no way in hell he would admit that.
Chloe and J.B. pushed out their wings. I watched them with no small amount of jealousy. Nathaniel and J.B. tried to prove who was the better man by carting me around, but I would have preferred to be able to fly without assistance from either of them.
Nathaniel scooped me into his arms and Beezle shifted from my shoulder to J.B.’s. Samiel slung Jude over his shoulders.
“Fly as fast as you can,” I said to all of them. I looked at Chloe. “Stay close to J.B.”
She nodded. J.B. looked insulted, but he was half-blind at the moment and I didn’t want him veering off course.
Nathaniel shifted me in his arms. It was going to be difficult for us to defend ourselves from the harpies with me in this position.
“How do you kill a harpy?” I asked curiously.
I didn’t know much about them except that they were half-bird, half-woman and that there was one in the film The Last Unicorn. That harpy had scared the bejeezus out of me as a kid.
“Play to your strengths,” Beezle said.
“You want me to set them on fire?”
“It’s probably the most efficient way of getting rid of them,” J.B. agreed. “And you’re the only one here who can throw fire.”
“Nothing like the fate of the whole party resting on your shoulders. You’d all better fly ahead of us, then, so you don’t get caught in the cross fire
,” I said. “All right, let’s go.”
We waited for the others to take off first. I looked at him.
“I’m not going to get much done if you carry me like a baby,” I said.
“If you shift to the position you were in when the Agents chased us, I could hold you steady while you fired behind me,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said, and climbed up, wrapping my legs around his waist. Nathaniel put one hand under my butt and the other around my waist. I could see over Nathaniel’s shoulder in this position, and both of my hands were free. Please, don’t let J.B. look back.
I felt that same electricity between us again, that crazy burning lust that had settled just under the surface of my skin. Nathaniel felt it, too. It was there in the flare of his eyes, but he didn’t say anything and neither did I.
Nathaniel spread his wings wide and lifted from the ground. I focused intently on the sky behind us, watching the trees in the forest that we had left hours ago. There was no sound, no movement.
“How quickly could the harpies catch up with us?” I shouted to Nathaniel.
“Very quickly,” he said. His hand shifted, pressing me tighter against him.
I was getting breathless, and not from the stress of watching for harpies. “Nathaniel, now is not the time.”
“I know,” he said.
It was like we were in the grip of insanity, both of us knowing that our lives were in danger, that we had friends depending on us to keep them safe. And even with all of this I still could think of nothing but him, his heat, his skin.
Then there was a terrible cry floating on the wind, from far and away across the field, and that sound was finally enough to break the spell of lust.
I saw black shapes rising from the trees, and the harpies came screaming for us.
Their cries permeated my blood, danced over my nerve endings. It was the most horrible sound I have ever heard. It was the sound of death on wings, death without mercy.
“How far away are the others?” I asked Nathaniel.
“They are ahead of us, but not far enough.”
I couldn’t risk turning around to see. The harpies were moving fast, much faster than I would have thought they could, and I needed to be ready. They were still far enough away for their faces to be indistinct, but they were no longer formless blobs. I could distinguish their heads from their bodies and their wings.
Black City (A BLACK WINGS NOVEL) Page 15
