Black Heart

by Christina Henry

  After a few long moments Puck looked away.

  “Now, my niece,” Daharan said, turning to me. “I believe you wish to return to your world, and have had some difficulty doing so.”

  I nodded, and Puck glanced at me in surprise.

  “You want to go back to Chicago? To the Retrievers? But I brought you here to keep you away from them,” Puck said.

  “No, you brought me here to manipulate me into doing something for you that you were too cowardly to do yourself,” I said. “The fact that I needed to escape the Retrievers was just a happy coincidence for you.”

  “You always think the worst of me,” Puck said, the twinkle back in his eye.

  “That’s because you always prove me right,” I said. I addressed Daharan. “So, do you think you can help me get out of here? I tried to open a portal myself but the world wouldn’t let me. The fae told me that Lucifer had closed all the ways out of this place, but I found a permanent portal across the ocean.”

  “The fae told you that, hmmm?” Daharan said, looking significantly at Puck again. “Yes, Lucifer did close all the ways to and from here, save that one. It is just possible, with the right manipulation of magic, to come into this world. But the only way to leave it is that permanent portal.”

  My heart sank. “So I’ve got to cross the ocean.”

  Daharan nodded. “Yes. But I will help you. It will take less time for my dragon form to take you there. However, there is a catch.”

  “There always is,” I muttered.

  “The portal does not lead directly to your world. You must pass through it to another place, and then you can go on,” Daharan said.

  “And where does the portal lead?” I asked, dreading the answer.

  Daharan looked at me, and the flames in his eyes burned more brightly than before.

  “The land of the dead.”

  8

  “THE LAND OF THE DEAD,” I SAID. “OF COURSE IT DOES. Because I’m already in trouble with the Agency and I need to be in even more hot water.”

  Daharan frowned. “Why does Lucifer not clear your way with the Agency? Particularly since you collected Evangeline at his behest.”

  “You know about that?” I asked.

  “I know much more than you think I do. Either of you,” Daharan said, with a pointed look at his brother. Puck shifted uncomfortably in the sand.

  “Well, anyway,” I said. “Lucifer likes to see me get out of my own jams. That’s why he wouldn’t do anything about the Retrievers coming after me. And it wouldn’t matter, anyway. They’ve got it in for me—Sokolov and Bryson and probably some faceless members of the board. Bryson’s got a personal problem with me because I, um, might have physically harmed him at one point or another.”

  Daharan raised an eyebrow at me.

  I wasn’t going to go into detail about how I’d let Nathaniel torture Bryson. I hurried on. “But mostly they don’t like that I managed to squeeze out of my eternal contract with them. Nobody at the Agency ever thought it would be possible.”

  “Yes, they believe you could incite rebellion amongst the Agents, cause them to give up their duty,” Daharan said. “It is foolish. None of the other Agents has your powers or your bloodlines. Were you not one of us, you would have been entirely unable to throw off the mantle of death.”

  “I’m not sure it will help my case if they know that,” I said. “They’re already afraid of me as it is. And a lot of bad stuff has happened to Agents because of me.”

  Ramuell and Antares breaking into the Agency with a horde of demons, killing indiscriminately. Agents being taken and used for Azazel’s experiments. Yes, the Agency had a lot of grief it could lay at my door, even if most of it was indirect.

  It wasn’t really my fault that my enemies used innocents in their quest to get to me. But I carried the burden of those deaths anyway.

  My stomach grumbled loudly, breaking the tension and the silence. I grinned in an embarrassed way. “Sorry. Can’t remember the last time I ate.”

  To my surprise, Daharan turned to Puck with an angry look. “Did you not think to feed the girl before you put her through her paces? She is with child. She needs nourishment.”

  He muttered something to himself, and a picnic blanket appeared on the sand. And on the picnic blanket there were . . .

  “Pancakes!” I said. I’m not ashamed to admit that I dove for that plate like Beezle going for the popcorn bowl.

  There was a whole spread, with orange juice and a bowl of brightly colored, cut-up fruit, and every kind of pancake topping I liked—butter and syrup and fruit jams. There was even bacon, and it smelled so heavenly that I almost fainted in ecstasy.

  “Slowly,” Daharan said. “You will make yourself sick.”

  I nodded, and carefully cut up one pancake on my plate after drowning it in butter and syrup. I ate slowly, letting my shriveled stomach adjust to the idea of food again.

  While I shoveled food in my mouth—in a careful, measured way, of course—Daharan indicated to Puck that he should follow him. The two of them wandered down the beach.

  I was definitely curious about what they were discussing, but I was probably better off not knowing. The less I knew of the plans of Lucifer’s brothers, the better.

  I was sure I could trust Daharan, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t also harboring a secret plan for world domination, or some desire to see one or more of his brothers destroyed. I didn’t want any part of that. I sincerely hoped that Daharan wouldn’t help me get to the portal and then ask for some unnamed favor later.

  It’s pretty likely, though, isn’t it? I thought. I’d never had dealings with any supernatural creature that didn’t want something in return.

  Down the beach, Puck turned to Daharan, his face angry. He was gesturing wildly, obviously furious. Daharan faced him with crossed arms, and he seemed unmoved by Puck’s performance.

  I ate until I couldn’t eat anymore, and the little guy inside my belly beat his wings happily. Now that I was full, I felt sleepy again. It seemed like all I’d done in the last couple of days was deal with insanely stressful situations and then pass out as soon as they were over. But I could feel my eyes closing, my mind drifting.

  I was warm and I was safe, and so was my child. I had no fear.

  When I woke it was night, and I was no longer on the beach. Daharan cradled me in a kind of sling that hung from his front claws. The ocean rolled away beneath us, and the wind blew in my hair. It should have been uncomfortable, but the heat emanating from Daharan’s body kept me warm, and I wasn’t worried that he would drop me. I drifted off again.

  The next time I opened my eyes the sun was blazing, and the ocean was gone. Below us were the spiky peaks of mountains. I felt wide-awake and refreshed for the first time in days. I felt like I could take on anything—the Retrievers, the Agency, Evangeline, even Alerian. Well, maybe not Alerian. But I felt a lot better than I had for a while.

  I reached up and put my hand on Daharan’s claw so that he would know I was awake. He snorted in response, and kept flying. We were close to the portal now. I wondered how long I’d been asleep, and how long we’d been flying.

  It is a much different experience to be carried by a flying dragon than to fly yourself. The dragon moves a lot faster, for one. I’d never been in an airplane—I’d never had any need to be in one—but I imagine that dragon flight is not unlike jet flight. The ground was much farther away than it would have been if I had been flying myself, and it seemed like we were passing slowly over it, though I knew we were covering dozens of miles every minute.

  I relaxed in the sling that Daharan had made for me, and made a concerted effort not to worry about what consequences might be in store for me if I passed through the land of the dead again. There honestly wasn’t much worse that the Agency could do to me that they hadn’t already done, but my actions would probably inflame Sokolov and his gang further.

  On the other hand, I couldn’t control what the Agency decided to do. Or Lucifer
and Evangeline. Or Alerian or Daharan or Puck. I could only respond to what they chose to do.

  I realized that had become a way of life for me. At some point I had ceased taking the initiative. I’d become a person who responded to what happened instead of making things happen. But could I do any different? I wasn’t going to sit back and let my family members run roughshod over innocent people.

  Daharan pointed his nose down, releasing flame as he descended. The mountains had morphed into smaller foothills, and the portal was near us. We dropped slowly, but I was still forced to crack my jaw to make my ears pop.

  Daharan landed softly in the grass in front of the portal. Most portals exerted a strong, vacuumlike pull on their immediate vicinity. Some of them created temporary cyclones so strong that they sucked in small objects from several feet away. This portal wasn’t like that. It hung in space like a mirror, quiet and still. It blended in to the landscape in such a way that you would not know it was there if you weren’t looking for it.

  Unlike most of the other portals I’d seen, the world on the other side was not obscured by mist. I could see the scorched earth of the land of the dead, the place that I’d taken Evangeline from.

  Daharan transformed into construction-worker-guy next to me. I turned to him.

  “Thanks,” I said simply. “Thanks for feeding me, and bringing me here. If you hadn’t, I probably would have had to ask for Puck’s help, and he would have demanded another favor in return.”

  “Madeline,” Daharan said. His face was very serious. That seemed to be his default emotion. I bet there wasn’t a lot of levity when Daharan was around. “Be wary of any deals you make with Puck. He is as changeable as the air.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said. “But sometimes I don’t have a choice.”

  “There is always a choice,” Daharan said.

  “Not always,” I said, thinking of the first time I’d indebted myself to Puck. He’d given me a jewel to escape Titania and Oberon’s court, and hadn’t bothered to mention that I would owe him a boon in return. Apparently you didn’t have to actually verbally agree to anything in order to make a contract with Puck.

  Daharan gave me a brooding look. I sensed that there was something else he wanted to say to me, that there was something Puck had done that upset him. But he just gave a small sigh and said, “Shall we go?”

  I looked at him in surprise. “Wait—you’re going to go with me?”

  “Of course,” Daharan said. “I would not be able to leave this world otherwise. And I will not leave you to the tender mercies of the Retrievers as my brother would.”

  I blinked away the tears that sprang up. “Thank you,” I said.

  “He should do this himself,” Daharan said, and the flames in his eyes blazed higher for a moment.

  “We both know that Lucifer only does what Lucifer wants to do,” I said.

  “He has always been like that,” Daharan muttered. “From the cradle.”

  I had a very strange vision of the four brothers as children. It looked a lot like a chibi-anime cartoon in my head, all soft edges and big eyes. Alerian was a tiny cute squid in a baby pool. Puck a troublesome toddler with chocolate on his face and a stash of cookies behind the couch. Daharan was a teensy dragon blowing puffs of smoke. And Lucifer rose up on little wings before falling to the ground, unable to stay aloft.

  I shook my head. My brain seemed to enjoy delivering me these non sequiturs from time to time. A thought occurred to me.

  “Who are your parents?” I said. I’d always assumed the four brothers had sprung fully formed from the dust of the universe or whatever. “If you were children, you had parents.”

  Daharan shook his head. “This is not for you to know.”

  “Why not?” I said. “They’re related to me, too.”

  “Our parents are very ancient beings, and they have slept for millennia,” Daharan said. “To speak of them would be to wake them, to draw their attention.”

  “Isn’t that a good thing?” I said. “Maybe Lucifer and Puck would calm down if Mommy and Daddy put them in a time-out.”

  “They would not put them in a ‘time-out,’” Daharan said. “When we were children, if Lucifer and Puck fought over a toy, my parents would simply break the toy.”

  “Oh,” I said, getting the picture. “So if they thought that Lucifer and Puck were fighting for, say, dominion over the Earth . . .”

  “They would wipe out the Earth and everything on it,” Daharan said.

  “Okay, let’s not wake up Great-Grandpa and -Grandma,” I said.

  Daharan gave me a very small, very brief smile. “Yes, let’s not.”

  In silent agreement we both turned toward the portal.

  “I will go first,” Daharan said.

  A cold, unreasoning fear gripped my heart. Gabriel had always wanted to go first, and that was why Azazel’s sword had killed him instead of me.

  “Do not worry,” Daharan said. “It would take a great deal to kill me.”

  “Of course,” I said, and watched Daharan step into the portal. A moment later, I followed.

  9

  THE PASSAGE THROUGH THE PORTAL WAS RELATIVELY placid. It felt like floating through water, and then I was out on the other side. Daharan caught me easily and placed me on my feet. I shaded my eyes from the burning sun and looked around.

  The land of the dead was just as crappy and desolate as it had been the last time I’d been here. The sun beat down on a bleached landscape that was broken only by the occasional rock or tree.

  “Do we have to walk?” I asked.

  Daharan shook his head. “No, we are not souls that are supposed to be here. We can pass through without penalty.”

  “Penalty from this world, maybe,” I said. “The Agency will probably have something else to say about that.”

  “The Agency has become too narrow-minded and rigid in its focus,” Daharan said as we took to the air. Like Puck, he didn’t have visible wings, but glided along as easily as Superman.

  We didn’t speak as we flew. Daharan didn’t seem like the type for casual chitchat, and I had a lot to contemplate. The existence of Lucifer’s parents had given rise to other questions, but I didn’t think Daharan would give me the answers. Where had the angels come from? Had they been created by Lucifer? By his parents? What did Puck mean when he said that Lucifer was the firstborn of his kind? What about humans? Were we some kind of grand experiment, or just an accident of chemistry and biology?

  I guess these were the questions that most people had about their existence. But most people didn’t have access to the answers through their relation to some of the oldest creatures in the universe.

  When Evangeline and I had crossed the desert, it had taken us less than a day on foot to find the portal. Daharan and I were flying, so I’d assumed it would take less time. But after a couple of hours we still hadn’t come across the place where I’d helped Evangeline’s soul cross over.

  Everything in the desert sort of looked the same, so it was possible we were going in the wrong direction.

  “Hey, shouldn’t we have found the portal by now?” I said to Daharan. “The one I used with Evangeline wasn’t that far away.”

  Daharan shook his head. “That portal was only present by your will and Lucifer’s, a tool of the Hound of the Hunt. The real portal is much farther.”

  “Right, because nothing can ever be simple or straightforward,” I said.

  “Madeline,” Daharan said. “You need to stop thinking that the universe is tossing obstacles in your way for its own amusement. You are just a tiny thing in the grand scheme.”

  “Well, nothing like having your uncle put you in your place and remind you how insignificant you are,” I muttered.

  “You have a part to play,” he said calmly. “And it is an important one. But the gears of the galaxy are many, and they grind exceedingly small.”

  “Does that mean I can take a break from saving the world, then?” I said.

  “No, you may
not,” Daharan said. “Unless you are willing to let the innocent die.”

  “You know that I’m not going to let that happen.”

  “Then this conversation is pointless,” Daharan said. He didn’t sound irritated, but there was a finality in the way he spoke that told me the subject was closed.

  I was annoyed and I didn’t really know why. I’d resisted taking on this role. I didn’t want to be a hero, but I felt it had been thrust upon me over and over. I’d repeatedly said I just wanted an ordinary life, but that life had been sacrificed at the altar of the greater good. And because of that I’d gotten a little arrogant, I guess. I’d thought that I was important, that the world couldn’t do without me.

  Now Daharan was telling me that I was just a little piece of a grand jigsaw. A very little piece. And that made me wonder whether all the sacrifice was worth it.

  It’s worth it if you save one life, I thought. Hadn’t I said that to Nathaniel once? He’d questioned why I struggled, why I threw myself in front of the bus over and over for people who would never know or care about me. And I’d told him that it was worth it if I saved one person. No one deserved to be mowed down in the street just because they had gotten in the way of something huge and horrible and incomprehensible.

  I sank into my own thoughts, brooding. I didn’t really pay attention to where we were going or how long it took. I just kept close to Daharan, who seemed to know what he was doing. So I was surprised when we suddenly started to descend.

  I was equally surprised when I saw that the landscape had changed significantly. The parched desert was gone, replaced by lush and rolling hills dotted with trees and flowers. But I didn’t sense the presence of the portal.

  “The portal isn’t here,” I said. “Why are we going down?”

  “Do you not need to rest?” Daharan asked, but he avoided my eyes as he said it.

  Daharan had been extremely straightforward in my dealings with him thus far. I had to wonder why he was keeping his gaze from mine. And if I should be worried that this was the double-cross I’d been half expecting ever since Daharan had agreed to help me.