Black Spring

by Christina Henry

  Of course, it was entirely possible that Alerian was drowning himself in wine for none of those reasons, but simply because Puck was annoying him.

  As if he had heard my thoughts, the new High King of Faerie looked over at me and winked. I resisted the very strong urge to leap across the table and punch him in the face. His eyes twinkled merrily, which meant that he could certainly read the emotion on my face if not what I was thinking.

  After the pasta was cleared, there seemed to be a lull in the gorging. Beezle was flat on his back on the table between Nathaniel and I, rubbing his belly and moaning.

  “Nobody made you eat your plate and mine for every course,” I said without sympathy.

  “I couldn’t let good food like that go to waste,” Beezle said. “But now I don’t think I have any room for dessert.”

  “You probably don’t have any room for breakfast tomorrow, either,” I said.

  Beezle lifted his head slightly to give me an incredulous look. “That’s crazy talk. I’ll be hungry again in a few hours. But that will be long after dessert, and there might not be leftovers.”

  He glanced hopefully at Lucifer. The Morningstar did not confirm or deny the possibility of leftovers. He gave no indication that he had heard Beezle at all. Instead, he rose to his feet, a wineglass in his hand.

  “I’d like to propose a toast,” he said, and all eyes in the room turned toward the table.

  I tried to slouch down as low as possible in my chair but my protruding belly made it impossible to slide under the table, which was what I wanted to do.

  “You look like a turtle,” Beezle whispered.

  “To my loving bride-to-be, Evangeline, for her loyalty and devotion throughout many eons,” Lucifer said.

  For a moment there appeared to be a legitimate light of affection in his always-calculating eyes. I remembered something I had thought once, a long time ago. Nobody had ever loved Lucifer except this one crazy girl. She had worshiped the ground he walked upon from the moment she first saw him, a shadow with eyes of starlight calling to her.

  She loved him, and in his own way he loved her, too. That was why she was given this gift, this public declaration, that none of his other lovers or children of those lovers had received. That was why he valued me more than his closer kin. I was a child of the line of Evangeline.

  Lucifer had continued talking while my mind drifted away. I came back to earth when Beezle nudged me.

  “Hey, you’re supposed to be drinking to your grandmother’s health,” he said.

  I noticed everyone else in the room doing just that, and figured they all had their faces in their own glasses and couldn’t see what I was not doing with mine. Lucifer noticed, though. He didn’t say anything, but he noticed. He noticed everything.

  After Lucifer’s toast, Puck, not to be outdone by his brother, stood up and proposed a toast to the happy couple. I confess that I tuned it out entirely. I find toasts to be uncomfortable for everyone involved, and I didn’t like that all this public speaking kept all the guests’ eyes glued to our table.

  Puck sat down finally, and then the dessert course was brought out. Beezle had sat up while Puck was entertaining the guests with his speech, and now he drew his dessert spoon toward him eagerly.

  “I thought you didn’t have room for dessert,” I said as dishes of flan were set before us.

  “All this talking gave me time to digest,” Beezle said.

  I rubbed my eyes. All I wanted to do was to leave this room and go to sleep. Of course, the presence of the shifter in the mansion made sleeping a much more dangerous proposition than it ought to be.

  Nathaniel and I would be able to protect the room with a spell similar to the one we used on my home before we left. We would have to do the same for Jude and Samiel. There was no way I was leaving them unprotected in this house.

  Finally, dessert was over and everyone was dismissed for the evening, with the promise of much revelry the next day. Several guests gathered in clumps to talk and drink more of Lucifer’s wine. Others disappeared into the maze of the mansion, either to travel to outside accommodations or to head to guest rooms.

  A bunch of people approached the table to thank Lucifer or pay fealty or whatever it was they wanted to do. I took advantage of Lucifer’s distraction to escape before I was introduced to anyone. Nathaniel put his arm around me and hurried me toward the side door. Samiel and Jude followed.

  Beezle wanted to stay behind and finish off any flan on the tables that had been untouched, but Nathaniel nixed that idea with a sharp look. My gargoyle came along with a grumble.

  We had nearly made it to the door when Michael stepped in front of us. His power was almost overwhelming up close, a tangible thing that filled the air around him. I had the same feeling I’d had before, that there was something familiar about him. Maybe it was because his power infused the line of Agents? That would make sense. He’d used his own grace to disguise Evangeline’s children, the original Agents, so many centuries before.

  “I do not believe we have met,” he said. His voice, too, seemed to occupy all the empty space around it. “I am Michael.”

  “Madeline Black,” I said, reaching my hand toward him.

  He looked at my hand impassively, but did not offer his own. “I know who you are. I said we have not met.”

  “Okay,” I said, feeling impatient suddenly. I was tired and cranky and not in the mood to play games with an immortal. “What do you want?”

  “To look upon the favored granddaughter of Lucifer,” Michael said. “I have long watched you from afar.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Your actions have been of great interest to many,” Michael said. “Particularly your actions of late. We always like to know when there is darkness loosed upon the world.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “Well, aren’t we judgy. You want to worry about darkness? Why don’t you have a conversation with your old pal Lucifer? He’s forgotten more about evil than I’ll ever know.”

  “Lucifer is not my concern. You are. You are an Agent,” Michael said.

  “Not anymore,” I said.

  “Whether you choose to exercise your privilege is irrelevant,” Michael said. “The line of Agents is my province, and I watch it closely.”

  “Fine, keep watching,” I said. I did not like the implication that I was somehow the problem here, and I didn’t care for Michael’s attitude. “And do nothing about the real problems, like Lucifer and his brothers trying to take over everything in sight. Just leave that up to me. As usual.”

  I stepped around Michael and stormed out of the room—at least, as quickly as a waddling pregnant woman can storm. I turned back after a moment to make sure everyone was following me, and saw Michael staring after us. He wasn’t looking at me, though. He was looking at Jude, who didn’t seem to notice the attention.

  “Did you call the first archangel ‘judgy’?” Beezle asked.

  “You were there. You have ears,” I said shortly. I pulled Jude close to me as we walked away. “Why is Michael staring at you?”

  Jude appeared startled. He glanced back over his shoulder. “I don’t know.”

  “Watch your back,” I said. “We have enough interest in our party as it is.”

  “Says the woman who called Michael ‘judgy,’” Beezle said.

  “There are a lot of people staying here,” I observed as we climbed the stairs. “Just how big is this place?”

  “As big as Lucifer wishes it to be, I imagine,” Nathaniel said. “If there are insufficient guest rooms, he can always add more.”

  “Why would he want so many of his enemies under his roof?” I said as we passed a hallway while climbing to the next level. A quick look that way showed me Focalor’s distinctive curved horns disappearing into one of the guest rooms.

  “He is keeping them close so he can observe them,” Nathaniel said. “They are much less likely to conspire with one another while under his nose. Additionally, some of them will feel it is
a great compliment that Lucifer has favored them thus.”

  “I don’t know why anyone would think it’s a compliment,” I muttered. “It feels more like a prison sentence to me.”

  Nathaniel and I carefully put the safe-from-the-shifter’s-magic spell over Samiel’s and Jude’s rooms. The two would be able to come and go as they pleased, but while they were asleep no hostile magic would be able to attack them.

  Beezle chose to sleep in Samiel’s room. “There’s isn’t enough privacy with you two in there,” he said. “Besides, with the spell you won’t need me to check everyone who comes to the door. Just don’t go wandering around the mansion without me.”

  After we sealed up our own room, Nathaniel and I changed and climbed into bed. I wanted to talk about what had happened that day, about my suspicions that Lucifer might be behind the shapeshifter attacks, but I was so exhausted I closed my eyes almost immediately.

  I only opened them again when I heard a woman screaming right outside my door.

  12

  It was pitch-black in the room. Both Nathaniel and I sat up abruptly. He threw on a bathrobe over his pajama pants, which was all he wore.

  “Stay here,” he said. I could see the angelic aura around him in the darkness, moving toward the door.

  “You shouldn’t go out there, either,” I said, swinging my legs to the side of the bed and using the bedpost to help me stand. “It could be a trick from the shifter to draw us out.”

  He paused. “You are correct. We should scan the area first.”

  There was a sound outside in the hallway like a body being dragged along, and then fingernails scraped across the surface of our door. For a moment I was a child again, frozen in place, terrified about what might be outside scratching to get in. Then I came to my senses.

  “Or maybe someone is bleeding to death out there while we stand here and debate about it,” I said, following Nathaniel’s glow until I joined him.

  “If it is the shifter, then he would know you would think that,” Nathaniel pointed out. “Your heroic tendencies are well documented.”

  A voice came from under the door, small and faint. “Help. Help me.”

  “Dammit,” I swore, lunging for the door before Nathaniel could do anything about it. I couldn’t leave someone out there, hurt and asking for help. I couldn’t bring myself to value my own safety first over someone in need.

  When I opened the door, though, I sort of wished I’d waited. Because Evangeline lay on her back, bleeding from several stab wounds to the chest. The blood made a patchwork of wine-colored stains on the same red dress she had worn during the festivities earlier in the evening. Whoever had stabbed her had removed the scarf that covered her eyeless sockets. Those empty holes looked horrible, endless pockets of night in her face.

  The bulge of her belly looked like it was writhing under the skin. Her baby was dying, too. My own child fluttered inside my body, safe for the moment.

  She could not have picked a worse place to be attacked. I would get blamed for this, without a doubt. And while the loss of Evangeline would be bad enough, Lucifer would fly into a rage such as we had never seen when he realized the child was gone.

  Nathaniel cursed behind me and nudged me out of the way to check her pulse. “She is still alive, though barely.”

  He gripped her hand. I felt the pulse of energy that came from the angelic healing power. But Evangeline’s wounds continued to bleed. Her breath was shallow, a sound so close to death it chilled me to the bone.

  Nathaniel pulled away, confused. “My power cannot heal her. Perhaps you can try.”

  I knelt on the floor beside Evangeline. The blood pooling underneath her stained the knees of my pajamas. They were flannel Eeyore pajamas, my favorites.

  I took Evangeline’s hand in mine, as Nathaniel had done. It was small and cold. Her life was almost gone. I pushed the power of the healing spell into her, and something happened that had never happened before.

  The healing spell rebounded on me.

  I tried again, only to have the same result duplicated.

  “It’s like the healing won’t go into her,” I said.

  “It’s because she’s died once already,” Beezle said.

  I looked up, and saw Samiel, Beezle and Jude emerging from their rooms into the hallway. Beezle fluttered to my shoulder, looking down at Evangeline with a sad, troubled expression.

  “I died, too, but the healing spell has always worked on me,” I said.

  “Your soul never actually went through the Door,” Beezle said. “And your bloodline is tied to Lucifer’s, tied to the power of Agents of Death. The rules aren’t going to be the same for you as they are for Evangeline. She’s just an ordinary human. She’s got a touch of power right now because she’s carrying Lucifer’s child. But it’s not enough to overcome the fact that she’s not supposed to be here. She died once, and Death wants her back.”

  Evangeline suddenly sucked in a deep breath, startling us all. Her hand tightened around mine.

  “The . . . baby . . .” she said, taking great deep gulps of air in between each word. “You . . . have . . . to . . .”

  She paused, and there was a long exhalation of breath as her body seemed to relax. I think we all thought it was over then. Her fingers loosened on mine for a moment, then gripped them tight again.

  She sat up with a sudden strength and urgency that I did not expect. Her eyeless face pressed close to mine. Her breath smelled of rotting death.

  “You must take the baby from me,” she said, her voice fierce. “You must save Lucifer’s child.”

  “What? How?” I said. I didn’t want to say that the baby could already be past the point of saving.

  “Cut him from my belly,” Evangeline said. “For your grandfather, you must do this.”

  “This is crazy,” I said as she fell backward to the floor again.

  “You should do it,” Beezle said decisively. “Saving the baby might be the only thing that will save all of us from Lucifer’s wrath when he finds out what happened.”

  The thought of cutting Evangeline’s stomach open and pulling the baby out in some kind of half-assed caesarean section made my own stomach turn.

  Jude pulled a huge gleaming hunting knife from his boot and presented it to me. Nathaniel knocked his hand aside.

  “Do not be so crude,” he said harshly. “Madeline can perform this task with her magic. It will be safer for the child, in any event.”

  “If you know how it’s done, then you do it,” I said. “I’m no baby doctor.”

  “Her life is slipping away as we speak,” Nathaniel said. “She is holding on to the last of her strength to preserve the life of the child. You must do it now. Now.”

  He placed my hands over Evangeline’s stomach. I could feel the writhing mass beneath, and knew that her child still lived.

  “I don’t know what to do,” I said. “I don’t understand what I should do.”

  “That which you have always done,” Nathaniel said. “Defy death.”

  The living heart of Evangeline’s child seemed to reach for me, reach for my magic, and the child within me responded to the call of the blood, Lucifer’s blood. I understood what I had to do.

  I spread my hands apart on her stomach, and as my palms separated a split appeared in her dress. Through the open seam I could see the swollen skin of her belly, so like my own. Except . . .

  Now that her stomach was exposed I could see that this child was not like mine. The limbs that pressed against the surface of the skin were not those of a human child. I paused, unsure of what I should do.

  “I don’t think I can,” I said. “It’s not human.”

  “You must,” Nathaniel said. “The gargoyle is correct. Lucifer’s rage will know no bounds if he loses the child. You were not with him when first he discovered the loss of Ramuell or Baraqiel. I was. His anger was terrifying to behold. But at least he had some time with those children. To lose this one, a child of his beloved Evangeline, with
out even seeing it—I do not want to consider what may happen.”

  “Ramuell and Baraqiel were monsters who murdered dozens of people. What if this child is, too? How can I knowingly let it loose upon the world?”

  “There is no time,” Nathaniel said.

  There was no time. And yet I hesitated.

  “Lucifer will kill us all if you do not at least attempt to save the baby,” Nathaniel said.

  “What if what’s inside there kills us all when it grows up?” I said.

  “Better the devil you know,” Beezle said.

  I was not sure. I really was not sure. But it seemed that, like so many times before, I was out of options. I put my hands on Evangeline’s belly, felt the thing that moved under the skin. Repulsion coursed through me. It was wrong to do this, but it was happening anyway. My magic knew what to do almost without my guiding it. It overrode my disgust and hesitation. The line of Lucifer would always seek out its own.

  Evangeline’s belly came apart under my fingers as if I had sliced it with Jude’s knife. Blood spewed out and splattered us all. Beneath the layers of dermis and fat and muscle, there gleamed a pulsing sac of fluid. Something dark darted beneath the surface.

  “She is nearly gone,” Nathaniel said. He held Evangeline’s hand in his own. “You must do it now.”

  My palms hovered over the final layer that divided Evangeline’s child from the world. I could let it die and damn the consequences. There was still a chance for humanity, a chance to be free from whatever monster she was carrying inside her.

  But the darkness that lurked inside me had other ideas. Magic surged from me without warning and through the thin membrane. Black fluid spilled forth as the amniotic sac broke open. A wet cry, alien and terrible, came from the open wound of Evangeline’s stomach. At the same time, Evangeline gave a long exhalation of breath, and then lay still. She was dead.

  “Take the child,” Nathaniel urged.

  I shook my head. “You do it. I don’t want to touch it.”

  Nathaniel gave me an exasperated look, but he reached inside the cavity anyway. I was disturbed that the dark magic I’d been trying so hard to suppress was now working on its own. It wasn’t simply that the power was difficult to control. It was developing a kind of sentience. Soon I would not be able to control it at all. It would control me, and then I would be the monster that Beezle feared I would become.