Black Night bw-2

by Christina Henry

  “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 her 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,” Nat
haniel 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.

  “Check 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.

  Not to mention Antares had managed to sneak up and take my gargoyle unawares, so who was to say that he couldn’t sneak up on me and yank my intestines through my nose?

  My brain was tired; my body was tired. I just wanted to crawl into bed and pull the covers up and pretend that everything was normal, but my life was getting less normal every day.

  “I need something to eat,” Beezle announced.

  “Of course you do,” I replied. “Pizza all around, then.”

  Beezle pumped his fist in the air. “Hawaiian?”

  Not my favorite, but it was Beezle’s. And I had missed him. He’d only been gone for a few hours, but I had missed him.

  “Hawaiian,” I said, and went inside to call for delivery, Nathaniel following silently behind.

  9

  A COUPLE OF HOURS LATER I WAS SHOWERED, FED and ensconced on the couch with Beezle watching one of our favorite movies—the one where the alien attaches itself to this guy’s face and then bursts out of his chest and eats everyone on the ship. You would think that, given the large quantities of actual monsters in my life, I would prefer preschool cartoons, but for some reason this film still entertained me. Maybe it was because Beezle felt free to comment on the total stupidity of the characters who got eaten.

  “Move, lady, move!” he shouted at the television. “The big monster is standing right there. Don’t cry. Run!”

  Nathaniel had gone downstairs to Gabriel’s apartment for the evening. I hoped that he wasn’t poking around in Gabriel’s private things. I felt bad about letting Nathaniel sleep in Gabriel’s space but I definitely didn’t want him up here, even on the couch bed. I did not want to get into an argument about husbandly rights.

  I also felt more than a little guilty about being happy that Beezle was home when Gabriel wasn’t. The lack of his presence was starting to press on me, like a niggling headache. Even when I was engaged with something, I was always aware of the fact that Gabriel wasn’t with me.

  The front doorbell rang just as the heroine of the film was making her escape from the ship that was about to self-destruct. Beezle and I glanced at each other, then at the clock. It was past ten.

  “Who could it be?” I asked.

  “J.B.?” Beezle guessed. “Gabriel, tied up in a burlap sack?”

  “Antares, Samiel, an emissary from Amarantha come to take my mortal remains back to her . . .”

  “Lucifer with a great big stick to beat you with for jeopardizing his negotiations . . .”

  I stood up. I didn’t want to contemplate Lucifer being angry with me. For all of my bravado where he was concerned, he scared me. I generally tried not to think too intently about him or I would feel sick to my stomach. It seemed that he had far too much power to affect my fate.

  “Okay, let’s not speculate and say we did.”

  “Can I go out the front window and see who it is?” Beezle asked.

  “Absolutely not,” I replied as I went down the front stairs. “What if it’s Antares again?”

  “Are you going to keep me in the house forever?” he whined. “I’m a gargoyle. I have guardian duties.”

  “Oh, excuse me. It must have been torture to sit on the couch and eat pizza and watch a movie. I’ll be sure to send you outside the next time I’m thinking of doing such a crazy thing.”

  I peeked through the curtain on the door at the bottom of the stairs. J.B. stood in the foyer with his hair sticking up all over the place and a haggard look in his eyes.

  “It’s really J.B.,” Beezle said.

  “I know that. He wouldn’t be able to stand in the foyer otherwise,” I replied.

  I swung the door open. “Can’t you ever show up during regular visiting hours?”

  “Feeling better, I see,” J.B. said. “Well enough to burn down about forty acres of outland forest and kill two of my mother’s favorite pets.”

  I rolled my eyes and turned around, indicating that he should follow. J.B. slammed the front door shut behind him.

  “How many times do I have to say that those pets of hers were trying to eat me?”

  “That’s what they’re there for,” J.B. said.

  “Well, was I supposed to let them do their job?” I opened my front door and waved him inside ahead of me.

  He turned on me, his face full of anger. “Of course not. But why the hell were you there in the first place? I thought that you were going tomorrow as part of an official envoy. You have no idea how bad this looks. The queen was ready to demand your head as compensation from Lucifer and call off the negotiations entirely. I’ve spent the last several hours trying to convince her not to do so and to let the negotiations proceed as planned.”

  “Well, thanks for that,” I said grudgingly. “But how did she find out so quickly? Those faeries that we saw in the forest said it was a day’s walk from where we were.”

  J.B. looked at me pityingly. “It
was a day’s walk. But they have magic, you know. They were at the queen’s court a few minutes after they left you.”

  “Those little bastards,” I said, and then I latched onto something that J.B. had said. “Yeah, wait a minute. They LEFT me. Us. Me and Beezle and Nathaniel. As soon as the spider showed up, they took off without a by-yourleave. So I didn’t see any reason why I should chase them down again.”

  J.B. looked interested. “The guards abandoned you?”

  I nodded. “Ran right through the woods without waiting to see if we were following.”

  He ran his hands through his hair. “All right, we might be able to work with that. It was a breach of conduct for them to leave you to danger. But what were you doing there in the first place?”

  I explained about Antares, the bomb, Beezle’s kidnapping and the invisible portal in the alley.

  “I’m sure that my mother doesn’t know anything about an invisible portal,” he said, frowning. “I wonder who put it there. And why.”

  “That’s just what we’ve been trying to figure out,” I said. “And I’m thinking it must have something to do with Gabriel’s disappearance.”

  “Why would anyone take Gabriel through a portal to the queen’s lands?” J.B. asked.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I keep feeling like I’m missing something. There are all these disparate factions floating around causing problems. Any one of them could have taken Gabriel.”

  “I still think it was the wolves,” said Beezle.

  “I still think you have wolf prejudice,” I replied.

  “Why are you defending the wolves?” J.B. asked. “It’s not like you have a relationship with them.”

  “Well, I do now, sort of. They said that I was a friend to them and vice versa. Plus, I don’t know—I’ve always kind of liked the wolves. They’re straightforward. They don’t play games like the courts of the vampires or the fallen. With the wolves, what you see is what you get.”

  “That doesn’t mean that they weren’t involved in Gabriel’s disappearance,” J.B. said. “Don’t kid yourself. They have an agenda, too. They’re trying to negotiate with Amarantha right now for some ancient lands of theirs that currently belong to her, and they don’t want the faerie court to strike any new deal with Lucifer’s kingdom.”