Black Heart bw-3

by Christina Henry

  The Cimice’s voices rose as one as they screamed their anguish to the sky. The spell plowed forward, knocking the Cimice down one by one, squeezing their hearts until they stopped.

  I felt them die, their agony in their final throes, and the pain brought me to my knees. I hadn’t calculated this. I hadn’t considered the possibility that I might feel sorry for the monsters. But there was no stopping it now, and in any case my purpose was still clear. They meant to kill innocent humans at the behest of the Faerie Queen. I couldn’t let that happen.

  This was preventive medicine. It was necessary.

  The spell went deep into the heart of the cavern, to where the vast majority of the Cimice were. I gasped as I felt the presence of all of them. There were not hundreds, or thousands. There were millions, stacked up on one another in a vast hive.

  My spell was killing them all, and I could feel every one. I closed my eyes, covered my ears, tried to drown them out. But I couldn’t drown them out. They were inside me, their screams and their pain. I couldn’t escape the truth of what I had done.

  I believed I had done this for the right reasons. But there was no disguising this darkness. This was a shadow on my soul, and it would stay there forever.

  I thought it couldn’t get any worse. I thought my body was numb to what was happening. Then the spell hit the hatchlings.

  They were just little monsters, I told myself. They weren’t children screaming.

  If I hadn’t done this, there would be children screaming—human children. The Cimice hatchlings would grow up to be just as ruthless as their parents.

  “They’re just monsters,” I said over and over. “Monsters.”

  But what are you? a voice in my head asked, and that voice sounded a lot like Beezle’s. You keep justifying what you do, but when do you draw the line that’s not supposed to be crossed?

  “I’m still myself,” I said as the spell ravaged the Cimice, worked its destruction on them. It seemed to take a long time, but then, there were a lot of the creatures.

  I don’t know how long I kneeled in the dirt, muttering to myself, hands over my ears, tears running down my face.

  Eventually the spell found the last of them, every last insect out on patrol, every creature hidden in a cavern in the darkness. I opened my eyes and dropped my hands.

  The spell was over, but I could still hear them screaming in my head. I could still feel them in my heart.

  I felt weary in a way that I had never been before. I had pushed my body to the limit on countless occasions, gone past the point of pain and exhaustion. I had suffered in my body and soul—when Gabriel died, when Ramuell had torn my heart out, in the Maze. But this was worse than any of that.

  This was not the weight of my own pain. You can carry your own suffering, learn to adapt, learn to live with it. But this was not my suffering. This was the hurt of another, of many, many others, and I was the one who had deliberately done them harm.

  The burden was tremendous, almost incomprehensibly huge. I felt broken inside.

  I stood slowly, like an old woman. Puck sat on top of a large boulder, his legs dangling down. He looked like a child who had just seen a wonderful show.

  “That was excellent,” he said, clapping his hands together. “They never knew what hit them.”

  “No, they didn’t,” I said wearily.

  “Are you not pleased?” Puck asked. “You have done what you set out to do. You have destroyed the Cimice utterly.”

  “Yeah,” I said, looking out over the place where the creatures had built their colony.

  Everywhere I looked there was death. Death, my constant companion, the truest friend I had ever had. There was no point in denying my true nature any longer. I was now, and always had been, an instrument of Death. As I thought this, something shifted inside me. The mantle of darkness settled more comfortably on my shoulders.

  I opened my arms wide, and rose up into the air.

  “What are you doing?” Puck called, and there was real alarm in his voice.

  “Burying them,” I said. “If you don’t want to be buried yourself, you’d better get the hell out of the way.”

  I threw my head back, let the power flow through me, the power of the sun tempered by shadow, the power of Lucifer that I had tried for so long to suppress, to deny. Now that I was no longer holding it back, it burst forth in a great array of light.

  The ground beneath began to shake, and I rose up, higher and higher. Puck shot into the air as the rock he perched on began to crumble.

  He did not have a visible pair of wings, but I’d long suspected he could fly anyway.

  Puck came to my side as my power hit the mountain before us and the whole thing started to fall. First rock sheared off the sides and crashed hundreds of feet below. Then the mountain seemed to cave in, collapsing inward upon itself.

  I rose higher in the air as giant clouds of dust billowed upward. The sound was tremendous, like the earth itself was being rent to pieces. And in a way, it was.

  Puck said nothing as the final resting place of the Cimice was covered with the remains of the mountain. Then we both turned in the direction of the forest, because we could feel him coming.

  The dragon.

  “I told you it was dangerous to fly,” Puck said, cursing. “You’ve attracted his attention.”

  I shook my head, closing my eyes. I felt his approach like fire in the blood, a blaze that spread throughout my body, all-consuming. “That’s not what draws him here. He felt my power when I brought down the mountain. It pulls him to me.”

  “Great,” Puck said, obviously disgusted. “The two of you are connected.”

  I opened my eyes again, looked toward the forest. The dragon was coming for me with all speed. Smoke and flame trailed behind it.

  “Who is he?” I asked Puck. “I know you know. Don’t pretend otherwise.”

  Puck appeared more annoyed than I’d ever seen him. “You know yourself. You do not need me to give the knowledge to you.”

  And just like that, I did know. My heart had known him from the moment I’d see him.

  “Daharan,” I breathed.

  “Yes,” Puck said. “My brother.”

  Beneath us the ground shifted and settled as the last of the mountain crumbled to pieces. I flew away from the Cimice’s graveyard, toward the dragon. Toward Daharan and the strange pull I could not deny. Inside my body, my son fluttered his wings in welcome.

  I had never felt this way about Lucifer or Puck or Alerian. With them there was always dread and repulsion and annoyance and fear on a sliding scale, depending on which brother I was dealing with. But Daharan—he was the one the others feared the most, yet from the moment I’d met him I’d felt a sense of safety, of coming home.

  “Daharan,” I said.

  The dragon curved its body as I approached. I landed on its neck, on the smooth expanse in front of the ridges that covered his back. I laid my head there. The dragon snorted in response and flew off in a different direction.

  My mental map of this world told me we were heading toward the ocean. I wondered what Batarian and the other fae would make of the collapse of the mountain and the destruction of the Cimice. Maybe Batarian would finally realize he’d dodged a major bullet, and that he should never have messed with me in the first place.

  I settled more comfortably on Daharan’s neck, glancing behind only to see what had become of Puck. He followed several feet behind. If a person could fly resentfully, then Puck was definitely doing it. He obviously didn’t want anything to do with Daharan, and he was glaring at his brother like he’d just taken Puck’s favorite toy.

  I turned back, smiling to myself. I have to admit that it was enjoyable to see Puck being thwarted.

  Daharan flew over the forest. It was even wider and longer than I had thought. Even when I’d done the tracking spell to find the portal, I hadn’t fully conceived of the size of this place. It made me realize just how difficult it would have been for me to reach the portal,
even with my wings.

  I was so warm and comfortable. I didn’t feel like I could fall, even though I wasn’t holding that tight to Daharan’s neck. My exhaustion caught up with me again, and I drifted off to sleep, waking only when Daharan nudged me with his nose.

  The sound of waves rolling to the shore filled my ears. I could taste the salt in the air. I opened my eyes and slid off Daharan’s back to the sand below. Daharan took off flying again, and I covered my eyes to watch him circling above, expelling flame.

  “He wants to change to his human form, but he’s got to get rid of some of the fire first,” Puck said behind me.

  He’d done some kind of magical quick-change act with his clothes and was wearing a pair of leather pants with a black T-shirt. His hands were stuck in the pockets and he was glaring at Daharan, his jewel-blue eyes bright with anger.

  “What are you so pissed about?” I said. “Aren’t you happy to see your brother?”

  “We don’t get along,” Puck growled.

  “So why don’t you just leave, then?” I said.

  “I can’t,” Puck said, and there was a wealth of frustration in his voice. “I cannot show such disrespect to the eldest.”

  I looked thoughtfully up at Daharan. “He’s the eldest, huh? Who’s second?”

  “Alerian, then Lucifer, then me,” Puck said.

  “That explains a lot,” I said. “Lucifer seems like he has middle-child syndrome.”

  Puck snorted out a laugh. “Yeah, that’s his problem. Middle-child syndrome.”

  “Wait—you told me that Lucifer was the firstborn,” I said. “You told me that in my apartment, when you revealed yourself as Nathaniel’s father.”

  “He is the firstborn of his kind. But Daharan is the eldest,” Puck said.

  “Aren’t you all the same kind, from the same parents?” I asked.

  “Not exactly,” Puck said, grinning. He was enjoying my confusion.

  His smile disappeared as Daharan slowly descended in lazy spirals until he landed farther down the beach. I’d never seen Puck look so genuinely unhappy as he did now, not even when he’d discovered that I’d accidentally undone the spell he’d put on Nathaniel at birth.

  Daharan’s claws touched the sand, and for a second he looked blurry. Then the dragon was gone, and in his place stood a man made of fire.

  He walked down the beach toward us, and the flame gradually receded until he looked like an ordinary man. He was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and work boots, and he looked a lot like a guy headed to a construction job. His hair was as black as mine, a little shaggy and overlong.

  But when he reached me I realized he would never look normal. He would never be able to disguise those eyes. They blazed with the fire that he could not bank completely.

  “Madeline,” he said, and he took my shoulders in his hands. He kissed both of my cheeks very gently, like I was something precious to him, and tears came to my eyes.

  This is what it feels like to have a father, I thought. This is why he makes me feel so safe.

  Then he turned from me to look at Puck, standing with his hands still shoved in the pockets of his pants.

  “Brother,” Daharan said. “Will you not greet me?”

  Puck gave Daharan the barest of nods, then dropped his hands to his sides and approached his eldest sibling. The two of them embraced, with much stiffness on Puck’s side and, I think, amusement on Daharan’s. It was very apparent that Daharan was the more powerful of the two, and they both knew it.

  “I was surprised to find you here, in this place,” Puck said when they parted.

  “As I was surprised to find you, and Madeline,” Daharan said.

  Some unspoken undercurrent passed between them, and they stared intently at each other. I wondered whether they were communicating telepathically, or whether they were just trying to stare each other down.

  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 throug
h 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.