Black City (7 page)

Magic scorched the air.

Bitter wind cut through our clothes but I barely felt it. All I could feel was Nathaniel. It was like he was running wild in my blood, burning me from the inside out.

I knew his power, and his heart. I felt his struggle to direct the spell, to corral this wild surge that neither of us had expected.

I felt the confusion that roiled inside him, the passion for me that he had proclaimed but that I had always denied.

I don’t know what I revealed to him, but he looked as shocked as I felt.

We were locked together by magic and surprise, by a spell that had gone out of control almost as soon as it had been cast. The power poured forth from us, its strength almost beyond comprehension. It settled beneath us, draping
all the innocents below in a protective veil. I knew that no vampire or demon would be able to harm the sleeping inmates of the hospital.

Our magic mingled and swirled, and when he put his mouth on mine it didn’t seem like a choice but an inevitability.

Part of me wanted to pull away. Part of me thought that it was far too soon for me to kiss some man who was not Gabriel.

The rest of me welcomed the heat, the burn, the wild play of magic in my blood, his mouth ravenous and devouring, our bodies pressed so tight that there was no air between us.

I don’t know what would have happened if someone hadn’t started shooting at us.

Nathaniel tore his mouth away, and the shock of his retreat brought the flow of magic to a grinding halt. I could still feel the remnants of him inside me.

A bullet whizzed past, close enough for me to feel the disrupted current of air that trailed behind it. I tried to look around, to see who was shooting, but Nathaniel held me tight and flew upward.

I was still full-body pressed against him, and this is not the best position for flying. I released his bloodied hand and put my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist. This made other, more intimate parts of us press together. I tried not to think about what was touching and focused instead on the fact that our lives were in danger. But the lingering remnants of the spell remained, and I could tell that Nathaniel was having trouble concentrating on the situation at hand as well.

“Do not move around,” he said through gritted teeth. “And keep a tight hold. I am going to have to let go in order to blast them with nightfire.”

“Who is it?” I said, still trying to crane around and see over Nathaniel’s shoulder at the creatures chasing us.

“Bryson,” Nathaniel said. “And at least two other Agents with weapons.”

“Bryson,” I repeated. How had he found me? Was he chasing me at Sokolov’s request or for his own reasons?

The super Agent hated me, and with good reason. I’d captured him spying on my property and Nathaniel had tortured him at my behest. But why was Bryson chasing after me and trying to kill me now? Didn’t the Agency care that the city was under siege?

Nathaniel spun in the air, blasted nightfire at the Agents, then turned back to fly away from them. I heard one of the Agents cry out. I really wished I had my wings back. I was useless like this.

Nathaniel dipped and swerved, careening around buildings and into alleys in an attempt to shake off the Agents. But the staccato rhythm of gunfire chased us as we headed south. All I could see from my position was Nathaniel’s strained face. I kept my grip tight and tried not to distract him while he was trying to save our lives.

And then the unbelievable, the unthinkable, happened. I couldn’t see Bryson and his cohorts behind us. I was concentrating too hard on keeping a close grip on Nathaniel. But the sound of the gunfire changed, and I’ve seen enough movies to know what an automatic weapon sounds like.

Nathaniel cried out in pain, a sound I’d never heard from him before. I glimpsed Bryson’s malicious, triumphant face. Then I heard the horrible sound of tearing flesh, felt the hot stickiness of Nathaniel’s blood on my hands.

It happened so fast that I hardly knew what was occurring until we were falling out of the sky. The shock of it caused my grip to loosen and then I was alone, in the air.

“Madeline!” Nathaniel cried. His hands reached for me, missed. I glimpsed the terror on his face as I plummeted toward the earth.

This was how it was going to end. I was going to be smashed on the ground like a bug. Nathaniel fell toward me, spinning this way and that, a gruesome rain of scarlet spraying from his body. I saw his left wing flap as he tried to right himself, saw him reach for me.

Our fingertips brushed together, slipped apart. Then he grabbed my wrist, his face strained, the muscles of his neck bulging with effort as he struggled to halt our descent.

That was when I noticed his right wing hung at an unnatural angle, and that it wasn’t moving.

Nathaniel managed to slow us down enough that our brains wouldn’t splatter all over the sidewalk, but we were still going to hit the ground with more force than the human body could take.

Inside my belly, a tiny pair of wings fluttered in distress.

Nathaniel jerked my hand, grabbed my waist with his arm and managed to turn over in midair. We were locked together like a pair of lovers, lying prone as we fell. Nathaniel’s face was grim.

A second later we crashed to the ground. Nathaniel’s body cradled me, protected me from the worst of it, but I still felt the impact reverberate in my skull. I saw stars for a moment. When my vision cleared, Nathaniel’s eyes were closed. He was paler than death.

I touched his cheek. “Nathaniel?”

He opened his eyes, and they were full of pain. His voice rasped out, “I need you to move off me, very slowly.”

I slid carefully to one side. I could tell that Nathaniel was trying not to cry out again. In the process of moving I noticed a twinge in my shoulder. I sat up on the concrete
and put my fingers to the hole in my coat. They came away bloody.

“Bryson hit you,” Nathaniel said. He watched me from his position on the ground. He hadn’t moved a centimeter since we landed.

“I think the bullet just skimmed me. I didn’t feel it,” I said, watching Nathaniel in growing dread. “Nathaniel, did you break your back?”

“Yes,” he said, and he sounded so strained. “I am attempting to mend it. But my powers are quite depleted at the moment, as, I imagine, are yours.”

It seemed like it had happened hours before, not minutes. The mention of the protective spell we’d put over the hospital—and what had come after—made me blush.

“Nathaniel,” I began, but he shook his head at me.

“If you have any magic to give now, you must use it to get away,” he said. “I do not know what became of the Agents or why they halted their pursuit. They may return to complete the task they have begun. But more important, there are vampires are approaching.”

“How do you know?” I asked, glancing around.

We were on the sidewalk in front of McCormick Place, next to the traffic circle and between the south and west wings of the complex. It looked like a ghost town. There was no traffic on King Drive—no taxis, no buses, no bikes. Nobody roamed through the pedestrian bridge that connected the two buildings. Everywhere was the detritus of people abandoning the area in haste. It was like we were the last two souls on the planet.

“I can hear them,” Nathaniel said. He’d closed his eyes again. “Madeline, you must go.”

“And leave you here to die?” I said.

“I will have fulfilled my pact with Lord Lucifer. I have protected you from harm, and now I can die with honor.”

“Are you out of your effing mind?” I said, grabbing his hand. “I am not going to leave you here.”

I tried pushing the healing spell into him, but my magic flickered and sputtered instead of pouring forth in a steady stream.

“Do not waste your energy on me,” Nathaniel said. “You must go. You must protect your child.”

“I won’t leave you,” I repeated.

“Madeline, you do not love me. I know this. I felt it inside you when our powers merged.”

“I don’t have to love you to know that it’s wrong to leave you,” I said fiercely. “I only have a little power left, and so do you. But we can put what we have together. Maybe we won’t be able to heal your wing, but we can at least repair your back so that you can walk.”

“Why will you not leave me?” Nathaniel said.

“I can’t,” I said. Everything I’d ever felt for Nathaniel—the hate and the anger, the sometimes friendship, and, yes, the lust I’d barely admitted to myself—roiled inside me. It would be easier to leave him, to let him fulfill the destiny that he thought Lucifer had written for him. But I couldn’t. Nathaniel had saved my life more than once. And I didn’t know yet just what he was to me.

“Madeline,” he began again, but I stopped his mouth with a kiss.

This wasn’t the kiss of before, full of passion and power. This was a connection born of desperation, of a need that I did not fully understand. Into that place where our bodies joined, I poured the remnants of my magic. My power touched Nathaniel’s, and his light was so depleted, so
fluttery and small. For the first time, I felt really afraid. I could feel him slipping away.

“Stay with me,” I said against his lips. “Stay with me.”

Tears were slipping down my cheeks, falling on his face, and it wasn’t just Nathaniel’s face but Gabriel’s, Gabriel’s frozen body in the snow. Nathaniel’s life wavered, a candle flame flickering in the draft.

“Stay with me,” I said again, and summoned all the strength, all the will, that I had remaining. I pushed that will inside Nathaniel, let my power twine around his.

The guttering flame grew brighter. It wasn’t the blazing heart that it had been before, but I knew at that moment I wouldn’t lose him.

Our magic flowed together through his body, found the broken vertebrae and reknit them—slowly, laboriously. There would be nothing left to mend his broken wing, but he would be able to walk and—I hoped—run.

After a long while I lifted my head and opened my eyes. Nathaniel studied me in silence.

“What?” I asked.

He looked contemplative. “I think I begin to understand you.”

“It doesn’t appear that understanding me has brought you any joy,” I said, pushing away from him and standing up. I offered my hand. “Do you think you can stand?”

Nathaniel ignored my hand. He sat up slowly before coming to his feet. His face was white as chalk.

Once he stood I could see the damage to his wing more clearly. It was sickening.

It appeared that Bryson had deliberately shot several times into the place where the root of the wing grew into Nathaniel’s back. Muscle and cartilage lay exposed, and the wing looked like it might snap off at any moment.

I reached toward his wing with my left hand, and that was when I noticed it.

“Nathaniel,” I said, and my voice was barely a whisper.

“What is it? They approach. We must move…” He trailed off as I held up my left hand and wiggled my fingers. All
five
of my fingers.

He grabbed my hand, inspecting it, then looked up at me in wonder. “How?”

“I have no idea,” I said. “This morning the last two were missing, just like they have been since Samiel cut them off. Now they’re back. There’s been so much other stuff going on I didn’t have time to notice the spontaneous regeneration of my digits.”

“Perhaps when we combined our powers the first time,” Nathaniel said speculatively. “The force was significantly greater than I expected. Perhaps this regrowth is a side effect.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe the fingers just grew back the way Lucifer always said they would.”

Nathaniel cocked his head to the side like a dog, like he was listening hard. “Unfortunately, we do not have time to contemplate this miracle. The vampires approach quickly.”

“You can’t run far with your wing like that. We’ve got to find some way to tape it up before we move any further.” I pointed at the glass doors of the convention center. “Let’s see if there’s a first aid kit somewhere in there.”

Nathaniel looked doubtful. “If we are trapped in there, we will be rats in a maze.”

“I’ve already survived a maze,” I said. “And we don’t really have a choice. If your wing breaks off, I doubt that it can be fixed. Do you want to be grounded for the rest of your life?”

I could tell that he wanted to argue further but the thought of being flightless halted him.

“Very well,” he said. “Let us move quickly. If we are fortunate, the vampires will be unable to distinguish our scent from that of other humans so recently near.”

As we hurried toward the doors something occurred to me. “But we don’t smell like humans.”

“I know,” Nathaniel said, and grabbed the handle of one of the doors. It opened easily. Whoever had left the building last hadn’t bothered to lock up.

I remembered the vampire I’d met in an alley the previous November, whose eyes had flared at the prospect of taking my blood because I was a descendant of Lucifer. I wondered how easy it would be for the vampires to find us.

We entered the cavernous hall. Stairs and escalators were before us. To our right was an auditorium and signs for bathrooms at the bottom of a short flight of steps. Advertisements for upcoming events open to the public were piled on a ledge directly to our right.

“There has to be an aid station here,” I said. “We just need to find a map and get there so we can tape you up.”

“And then return outside as quickly as possible. I do not like the idea of being closed in this building with vampires.”

After some searching we found a map of the building and located the aid station. McCormick Place is a sprawling complex that comprises several buildings. We were in the South building. The first aid center was on level 2.5, next to a FedEx office.

“Level 2.5?” I said as we hurried up the long flight of stairs to the upper floor. It was slower going than our usual hurry. Nathaniel really struggled. Even though we’d healed
some of his wounds, the blood loss and exertion were taking their toll on him.

He paused on the stairs, panting. “You ask the question in a way that expects an answer from me. I have no possible explanation for any of the strange things that humans do.”