Black Lament (28 page)

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.”

“You leave them out of this,” I said fiercely. “If the Agency has a gripe with me, that’s one thing. But you leave them out of this.”

“That is not for me to decide,” Bryson said. “The angel and the gargoyle come, too.”

“Little Agent,” Nathaniel said, and there was malice in his tone. “What makes you think I have to do anything you say?”

Bryson slid his eyes away from me toward Nathaniel, but he was too late.

Nathaniel moved faster than any human could. All I saw was a blur out of the corner of my eye, and then Bryson was on the ground and Nathaniel stood above him, holding the gun.

I dropped my hands. Beezle glared down at Bryson from my shoulder like an angry parrot.

“Where’s J.B. and Jude and Samiel?” I asked.

“I will tell you nothing,” Bryson said, his eyes snapping with anger.

I looked at Nathaniel. Nathaniel kicked Bryson so hard that I heard one of his ribs break.

Bryson coughed, but did not cry out. “I will tell you nothing,” he repeated.

“I didn’t want you for an enemy,” I said. “You could have helped us. We saved fourteen missing Agents.”

“And killed two,” Bryson said. “You are an Agent of death, not a bringer of it.”

“How do you know about that?” I asked. If Bryson knew, then the deaths of those Agents had to have been written somewhere, and that meant that the Agency had known before they’d sent Sokolov to threaten me that I would go to Azazel’s mansion. And that also meant that they knew I would find the Agents, and they did nothing to help me.

“I know more than you think. I’m not just a tool for Sokolov, as you seem to believe.”

“Then stop acting like one,” I said. “Did it really sit well with you that the Agency was willing to let their own people die just because they have some grudge against me?”

“The Agency has their reasons,” Bryson said.

“And I have mine,” I said. “Tell me where the others are. Don’t make me hurt you.”

“Are you a monster, then, like the things you claim to despise? Will you torture me for your own ends?”

“I am not a monster,” I said, and I don’t know who I was trying to convince—him or me. “But I won’t let you or the Agency or anyone else run over me anymore. I want to know where Jude and J.B. and Samiel are, and believe me, I will break you to get to them.”

“That line just keeps getting grayer and grayer, doesn’t it?” Beezle murmured, for my ears only.

“You will not break me,” Bryson said.

“She may not be able to, but I can,” Nathaniel said, and then he gave me a very serious glance. “Look away.”

I did. I was sure I wouldn’t want to see.

Bryson didn’t scream, but he made the most piteous noise I’d ever heard.

I was grateful for the rising darkness, grateful that it was unlikely that anyone could see what we were doing in my backyard. Of course, maybe the neighbors didn’t even bother to call the police anymore. They’d seen me carrying bodies into the basement and I hadn’t been arrested, so it was possible they’d given up and learned to keep their curtains shut.

“Where have you taken Madeline’s companions?” Nathaniel asked.

He sounded cruel. He sounded like a man without mercy or conscience. I’d never heard him like that before, not even when he was trying to kill me. This was the right-hand man of Azazel, the hammer that Azazel had used on his enemies.

I tried hard to remember that I had saved his life for a reason, and that he was doing what he was doing for me.

Bryson whimpered, but he didn’t answer Nathaniel.

“This is really okay with you?” Beezle asked quietly.

“I can’t leave J.B. and Samiel and Jude to the Agency,” I said. “I can’t.”

“You’re losing yourself,” Beezle said.

“No,” I replied. “I’m finding myself.”

“I hope you like the person you find,” Beezle said.

Nathaniel did something else, and this time Bryson did scream.

“Where are Madeline’s companions?” Nathaniel asked again.

“The Agency, the Agency!” Bryson yelled.

“Where in the Agency?” I asked, turning around.

Bryson’s eyes were bleeding. I did not want to know how Nathaniel had done that. The super-soldier looked pale and broken, all his defiance gone. I was sorry for that. I was so sorry that it had come to this.

“In the rooms where they kept the crazy people,” Bryson said, and he started to cry.

“In the basement, near the Hall of Records,” I said to Nathaniel. “Let’s go.”

I pushed out my wings, took off toward downtown. Beezle climbed back inside my coat for warmth. Nathaniel flew at my side, blessedly silent. I didn’t know what I might say to him right now. How do you thank someone for torturing a strong man until he’s broken?

“Better cloak yourself,” I said to Nathaniel. “I want to go in the front door, and you’ll scare the locals if you land on the sidewalk with those wings out.”

He nodded, and a short time later we stood on the sidewalk in front of the Agency doors. Even though I was under the veil, other Agents could see me, and they gave me a wide berth as they exited the building.

Beezle poked his head out of my coat. “How are you going to play this?”

“I’m just going to go in there like I belong. Which I do,” I said, and then to Nathaniel, “Try to stun anyone who gets in our way. I’ve had enough of bodies today.”