“True,” I said, and started blasting in front of me. “Go up and tell Jude and Nathaniel to start bringing the Agents down.”
Nathaniel floated down a few moments later with Chloe and two other agents held in a fireman’s carry. I had blasted about thirty feet of tunnel, and he brought them up and rested them just behind me.
Jude followed with two Agents, and I continued blasting as they went back and forth. I could feel tremors above me, and I suspected that some of Azazel’s soldiers had finally noticed the howling nephilim.
Beezle flew down with the update. “A company of soldiers came down to see what the nephilim was freaking out about. Fortunately for us, the nephilim was so crazed from being denied fresh meat that it turned on the soldiers. They’re duking it out as we speak.”
“Good,” I said, sweat pouring over my face as I blasted another ten feet of tunnel.
Samiel came up behind me. I’ll help you clear the tunnel. The other two will move the Agents.
I nodded. It was faster going with Samiel’s help. Nathaniel and Jude had the tedious job of running back and forth, collecting Agents, dropping them off near us, then running back for the others.
On one of these trips Nathaniel said, “I created an illusion in the room to look like the stone floor was still there. It won’t fool Azazel, and if anyone steps on it, they will still fall into the tunnel, but perhaps it will hold them off.”
“Maybe they won’t go all the way into the room. If they see the Agents are missing and we aren’t there, then hopefully they’ll just go back upstairs to raise the alarm. Good thinking,” I said.
Nathaniel smiled briefly and went back for more Agents.
I don’t know how long we were underground, dirt and insects falling in our faces, laboriously moving a few feet at a time, but finally Nathaniel said, “That’s enough.”
I looked back at him. He was crouched low in the tunnel like Samiel and Jude were. I had only blasted a path maybe six feet high and a few feet wide, and it was a tight squeeze for anyone not pocket-sized.
“We’ve passed beyond Azazel’s property line,” Nathaniel said.
“So we can make a portal?” I asked.
He stepped close to me, put his hand on the dirt in front of me and said the words of the spell in an undertone. I was caged between his body and the dirt wall in front of me, and could feel the heat that emanated from him. I stood as still as possible and tried not to think about how close he was.
A portal opened before us, and I turned around, giving Nathaniel a little nudge in the shoulder with my hand so that he would give me some space.
“The Agents go through first,” I shouted.
The noise from the portal was deafening in the small space, like being closed up in an elevator with a running vacuum cleaner.
Samiel signed to me before scooping up Chloe. I’ll go through with her. You push the others through one by one and I’ll catch them.
“At twenty-second intervals?” I said, trying to mentally calculate the time it would take for him to catch someone, lay them on the ground and turn around for the next Agent.
He nodded and squeezed past Nathaniel. I pressed up against the side of the tunnel, and he went through the portal.
“Jude, start passing them up to Nathaniel,” I said. “I’ll keep watch.”
Beezle flew up and landed on my shoulder as I pressed past Jude, looking anxiously back the way we had come. Jude and Nathaniel started passing the sedated Agents through the portal.
“What are you worried about?” Beezle asked. “Your earthworm plan worked. As unlikely as it seemed.”
“Yeah,” I said, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it had been too easy. Someone had to have figured out by now that we’d gone underground.
“This is the last one,” Jude called. “Let’s get out of here. I’m starting to feel like a badger.”
He went through the portal with the last Agent in his arms, and Nathaniel turned back to me, his hand outstretched.
That was when the roof of the tunnel blasted open.
18
IT WAS LIKE BEING INSIDE A TORNADO. NATHANIEL, Beezle and I were scooped up by a howling wind, spun in circles and slammed to the ground in the blazing sunshine.
We were in a little clearing in the woods surrounded by leafless maples. Snow had melted in patches and revealed green moss underneath.
I pushed to my feet, dizzy from being twirled like a top, and stared across the open chasm at my father.
He’d always appeared young and handsome, but while he hadn’t aged at all, his face was changed. He was pale as death, and long lines of grief were etched in his face. I’d have expected him to be surrounded by flunkies, but he stood alone. His dark eyes, the mirror of my own, were lit with flame.
“You killed my son,” he said.
“You killed my husband,” I replied, my fingers curled at my sides. I had desired this from the moment Gabriel had fallen into the snow, his lifeblood running from his body.
“I curse the day that I met your mother, that I allowed myself to be seduced by her,” Azazel spat.
“Oh, fuck you,” I said. “You were no damned innocent.”
Nathaniel had warily come to his feet beside me and was slowly backing away. At least he had the sense not to get between us. Beezle had flown up to a branch high above and watched us with bright eyes.
“You will suffer like none other,” Azazel said, and he flew toward me.
I didn’t bother to banter with him. I blasted him with nightfire.
He knocked my spell away easily, like he was batting away a softball, and landed on the ground in front of me. I slashed out at him with the sword and he shot me with a bolt of lightning that knocked the sword from my hand.
“Now you can no longer use Lucifer’s shield,” Azazel said, and he grabbed me by the shoulders, lifting me from the ground.
His hands were covered in flame, and I screamed as the heat burned through my skin like I was being branded. I kicked Azazel in the ribs with all my strength and he squeezed harder. I could smell my own flesh cooking, and my baby beat its wings in distress.
Azazel’s eyes went wide and he dropped me to the ground. I knew he’d felt the presence of the baby. I didn’t wait for him to get over the shock. I shot him in the face with electricity, aiming for his eyes.
He screamed, covering his face with his hands, and stumbled backward toward the pit. I struggled to my feet, my shoulders still burning. I could feel Azazel’s spell working through the layers of muscle down to my bones.
I blasted him again, and he fell backward into the tunnel.
“Madeline!” Nathaniel cried, and he tossed me the sword.
I barely caught it with my crippled left hand as Azazel flew up out of the hole again. I pushed out my own wings and rose to meet him.
He conjured a blue sword from nightfire and met my strike with his own. He slashed at me furiously, his anger seeming greater than ever now that he knew I was carrying Gabriel’s baby.
It was strange. The angrier Azazel became, the calmer I felt. I knew from long experience that when I was angry, I made mistakes. And I didn’t want to make a mistake. I wanted to see Azazel staked by my sword.
Maybe then my heart would be at peace.
I shot nightfire at him with my left hand while hacking with the sword in my right. He parried me easily, but his movements were becoming more frantic. I managed to slash open his forearm, and blood dripped on the hilt of the sword.
Another thing that I knew was that if your hands were slippery, it was harder to hold on to your sword. Azazel’s fingers slipped, and the nightfire sword tumbled away, disintegrating once it was disconnected from the source of its magic.
I thrust forward, thinking I had him.
But I’d never been that good at seeing all the angles. That was why Lucifer was always outsmarting me.
Azazel closed his hand over the blade—heedless of the fact that it laid open the skin there—and sent a pulse
of magic through it.
It slipped under my palm, raced through my body in time with the frantic thrumming of my blood and covered my heartstone with a suffocating clutch.
I gasped for breath as Azazel grinned maliciously and let go of the sword.
“And so goes the least wanted child of my line.”
The blade fell away as I covered my chest with my hand. I couldn’t breathe. I could feel my heartstone being squeezed by an invisible grasp, and soon, very soon, it would burst.
And when it burst, I would die. And so would my child. The magic was an invader under my skin, and I rejected it with everything I had. I’d done this once before, when I’d thrown Evangeline from my body and undid her possession of me. I drew on that now.
“No,” I said, and grabbed Azazel’s bleeding palm, pulling him to me in one swift motion. “This you can have back.”
I summoned all my will, all the strength that I had remaining. No light of the Morningstar lit in my blood, but I didn’t need it.
I pushed the spell back at Azazel and poured it into his open wound.
His eyes went wide, and purple veins stood out in relief all over his face.
And still, he smiled at me. “It’s too late. It’s already begun. There’s nothing you can do to stop it.”
“Bye-bye, Daddy dearest,” I said, and sent a blast of electricity to follow Azazel’s own suffocating spell.
It zoomed through his veins and pierced his heartstone, already squeezed to the limit.
Azazel exploded from within, and as he did all the magic that had been stored inside his body for centuries exploded outward as well.
“Madeline!” Nathaniel shouted, and he snatched me out of the air, flying us back into the open pit and covering me with his wings as the world above us went supernova.
“Beezle!” I shouted. “Beezle!”
“I have him,” Nathaniel said, his voice taut with strain as he protected us from the storm above, and Beezle crawled from inside Nathaniel’s coat to me, clinging to my neck.
The explosion seemed to go on forever. Nathaniel hunched over us, sweat dripping into his eyes, holding me close.
After a very long time, it seemed the storm had passed.
Nathaniel still held me, his teeth clenched.
“Nathaniel,” I said. “You can let me go now.”
His arms seemed like they were locked in position.
“Nathaniel,” I said again, getting impatient and trying to struggle out of his grip. “Come on, let me go.”
“Yes,” he said, and his arms went suddenly limp.
I rolled out of his embrace and into the dirt, and came up spitting. Beezle flew upward so he wouldn’t get crushed by my flailing limbs.
“What the hell…” I started.
That was when I saw the tree branch embedded in Nathaniel’s back. It was as long as Lucifer’s sword, and a dark scarlet stain spread from the point of impact.
“Gods above and below,” I said, reaching for the branch, pulling it from him.
He gave a wet, gasping breath and went still.
I fell to my knees, covered the wound with my hands. “Nathaniel, wake up. What do I do? What do I do?”
“You have to heal him,” Beezle said.
“Heal him? But—I don’t know how. Gabriel never taught me how,” I said.
I swiped at my face, wondering why I was crying. It couldn’t be because I cared about Nathaniel. It couldn’t be, because that would mean that I was letting Gabriel go, and I could never do that.
But I couldn’t let him bleed out under my hands. I couldn’t let that happen again, not to someone who’d saved me over and over.
I put my hands over the wound and searched for the flickering candle that was the source of my magic. It was low now, tired from all the energy I’d expended fighting Azazel. But I thought I had enough left to help Nathaniel.
I remembered the warmth that I always felt when I was healed by an angel, the light of the sun that ran through them and into me. The sun was inside me, too, pulsing inside my heartstone.
I pushed my power through my heartstone, letting the light of the sun fill me up and flow through me, and as I did I felt my own wounds healing, too.
The blood ceased flowing, and the gap in Nathaniel’s skin closed before my eyes.
“Nathaniel?” I said, turning him over so I could see his face. “Nathaniel?”
He opened his eyes blearily. “Madeline?”
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He sat up, putting his hand over his heart. “Did you…”
I nodded.
“I can feel you,” he said softly. “I can still feel you inside me. And something else. Your baby.”
I sucked in a breath. I hadn’t wanted Nathaniel to know about that yet.
“Why did you keep the knowledge from me?” he asked.
“I didn’t know how you would react,” I said. “I wasn’t sure if I could trust you.”
“But you must trust me now,” Nathaniel said. “You saved my life. You could have let me die, and you would have been free of me.”
“I couldn’t do that,” I said.
“Why not?”
I shook my head. I wasn’t ready to face this. I’d thought of Nathaniel as an enemy for so long that it was difficult for me to think of him as an ally, much less a friend.
“I can see why Lucifer is so invested in you,” he said finally, when I didn’t answer his question. “A child born of two of his lines. You must be very precious to him.”
“I’m only precious to him as a breeding instrument,” I said. “Once the baby’s born, he couldn’t care less about me.”
“I don’t think that is true,” Nathaniel said.
“Then why won’t he answer my damned phone calls?” I said. “Why is it that he entangles me in an avalanche of problems and then disappears? His little parasite isn’t even talking to me now.”
“Hey, guys,” Beezle said, and his voice sounded far away.
I looked up and saw him perched on the rim of the hole. “You might want to come up here and see this,” he said.
I flew up to the forest level, Nathaniel behind me. Then I stopped. And stared.
The forest was gone. The grass, the trees, the moss, the rocks. Gone. So was Azazel’s mansion, every last stick of it. So were all of the demons and soldiers that had populated his army. Everything, for miles around, was gone. There wasn’t even ash to show that something had once stood there. It was like everything had disintegrated into molecular particles.
“Gods above and below,” I said. “It’s like a nuclear bomb went off here.”
“It did,” Beezle said grimly. “Azazel was old. Very, very old.”
“The other Grigori will not be pleased with you,” Nathaniel said.
“Please. He led a rebellion against Lucifer. Why should they care?”
“For the same reason the faeries cared that you killed Amarantha, even though most of them did not agree with her actions,” Nathaniel said. “Because Azazel was one of them, and you are not.”
“I don’t care,” I said, and heard the fierce joy in my voice. “I don’t care. Azazel deserved to die. I swore that he would, and I did it. If the Grigori want to come after me, then they can have a taste of what Azazel got.”
“The Grigori will fear you now,” Nathaniel said. “I’m sure that none of them suspected that you had such power inside you.”
“They’d better be afraid,” I said. “I’ve had enough of taking shit from them and everyone else. Titania, the Grigori, the Agency. All I’ve ever wanted is to live a quiet life, and they won’t let me.”
“What will you do?” Beezle said, looking worried.
“Whatever it takes,” I said.
We all stared at the bleak ruin that had once been Azazel’s shining court.
Beezle sighed. “Well, our work here is done. Maddy’s destroyed yet another building, so let’s portal it home.”
“Yeah,” I said, and my stomach
growled. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten something. “I think I want some doughnuts.”
“Oh, no,” Beezle said, looking alarmed. “Don’t tell me you’re going to get pregnancy cravings now and start eating all my doughnuts.”
“There’s no reason for you to eat a dozen doughnuts all by yourself,” I said.
“There’s every reason,” Beezle said. “I need to check all the flavors to make sure they’re still good.”
“Children,” Nathaniel said, and he opened a portal. “After you, my lady.”
I went through the portal, Beezle still shouting in my ear about the necessity of buying two boxes of doughnuts. I crashed into my back lawn with my usual grace, and stood up, dusting snow from my legs. It was getting dark now, the sun very low behind the city skyline.
And heard the slide of a semiautomatic handgun very close to my ear.
“Agent Black,” Bryson said. “You are under arrest for crimes against the Agency.”
“What crimes?” I asked, holding my hands up. I didn’t want to make any sudden movements with Bryson holding a weapon to my head.
Nathaniel came through the portal behind me. I heard the soft landing of his boots in the snow.
“Don’t come any closer!” Bryson shouted. “Or I will kill her where she stands.”
“Listen to him, Nathaniel,” I said.
Guns scared me. There was something so final about a bullet. Magic could be undone, as I’d shown with Azazel’s spell. But a bullet through the head couldn’t be taken back.
The house looked cold and silent. I assumed Jude and Samiel had taken the Agents somewhere to be tended. I wondered why they weren’t back yet, and what they had thought when Nathaniel and I hadn’t followed them through the portal.
“You can come with me quietly and cooperatively,” Bryson said, “or you can make a fuss and give me a great deal of pleasure.”
“I understand,” I said. And I did. It didn’t take a genius to realize it would give him a great deal of pleasure to end my days on this earth. “Nathaniel and Beezle, you stay here.”
“Your conspirators are also under arrest,” Bryson said. “We have already captured the wolf and the mute. Bennett was arrested hours ago.”
Black Lament Page 22
