Black Heart (19 page)

But I was outclassed here. Everyone had warned me that tangling with something as old as Titania was a bad idea. Too bad it took me so long to realize it.

The attack, when it came, arrived without warning. One moment I was searching the air for Titania. The next moment pain was arcing through my body. It was like I had been set on fire from the inside out, but it was a small, subtle fire. It wormed in between the layers of muscle and nerve. It made me want to scream and tear at my clothes, claw at my skin until it bled and I let the burning thing that was underneath
out
.

Titania blinked into sight a few feet in front of me. She’d been covered under a veil so thorough that I hadn’t even been aware she was using magic. My own spell hadn’t found a trace of her.

She had one hand raised, and her eyes were focused with laser intensity on mine. I could feel her hate. She wanted me to bleed, and she wanted to watch.

The pain was agony. I couldn’t fight this. Fire was the weapon I used on everyone else. It had never harmed me before, and a part of me felt vaguely betrayed. I couldn’t smash it or hit it or knock it down. I could barely even think straight. The fire had sped through my spine and up to my brain, seeping into the layers of cortex, setting off all the synapses like a triggered minefield. Pain exploded in my head, and I did scream then. Blood gushed from my nose in a torrent.

I had to get away from her, get away from the pain. But I couldn’t even move, and I realized she was holding me in place, keeping me still so she could torture me. I hung in the air like a rag doll, suspended only by Titania’s will, unable to do anything more than writhe in agony.

There had never been any hope for me, really. It had always been a matter of time before I was caught and pinned like a struggling butterfly by one of these creatures.

As I thought this, my son shifted in my belly, his little wings fluttering in distress.

My son. My son. I couldn’t let Titania win. I couldn’t let her take him away. That thought centered me, gave me the clarity I needed to think through the pain.

There was no chance of my reversing the spell on Titania as I had with Azazel. This magic was much more powerful, and much more invasive. I needed to get her to stop.

Then I needed to find some way to make her hurt as much as she had hurt me. It was the only thing she understood.

I could offer her compassion in the face of her loss and she would simply spit it back at me. I could try to explain, try to broker a peace with her.

There was no point. Titania had decided long ago that I was her enemy. And every time I had selfishly refused to let her hurt me, or humiliate me, or kill me for the amusement of her court, I had only compounded her notion that I existed only to defy her.

So many of my choices seemed to come down to this. I could kill, or I could be killed. It was not the life I wanted for myself, or for my child. But it was the only life I had, and I couldn’t let Titania take it away.

She laughed like a mad fiend as I grew visibly weaker. Blood was still running from my nose and the loss was making me feel dizzy and sick. I pulled my focus together, reached deep inside me for my magic.

And touched the black heart inside of me, the swirling, dark mass of power that threatened to consume me.

I could use that power, and survive, and possibly be someone else afterward, someone that Beezle had warned of, someone that may not be recognizable as Madeline Black.

Or I could let Titania keep me locked in a cage for the rest of my short life while she poked me with sticks.

When I thought about it that way, there really wasn’t much of a choice at all.

I’m sorry, Beezle.

I plunged into the darkness.

THE PAIN DISAPPEARED IMMEDIATELY. TITANIA WAS
still throwing the spell, but I could no longer feel it. My mind had retreated to a place where her magic could not harm me, a place that was cool and dark and seething with coiled energy waiting to be loosed.

I lifted my head and looked into the eyes of the Faerie Queen. Shock spread across her face. She had been convinced that I was broken.

And I had been. But now I was born anew.

I wiped the blood from my face with my sleeve. “Stand down, Titania, High Queen of all Faerie. Or be destroyed.”

“Do you truly believe you can defeat me?” she asked. “The power of the Morningstar is diluted inside you. You are nothing but a pretender to Lucifer’s line.”

“I warned you,” I said steadily, and never took my eyes from her face. “When you are crying out for Oberon at the end, remember that I warned you. I gave you the chance to leave.”

Then I let the darkness inside me surge up. Magic filled my every pore, racing through to repair the damage wrought by Titania’s spell. The storm above us disappeared as abruptly as it had arrived, and the clouds blew away to reveal the blazing sun and the fresh blue sky of a spring day.

The heart of my power was the sun, a sun covered by the moon in a burning eclipse. I’d never truly understood this before. I had always held back, always been afraid of unleashing the full extent of my power.

I was no longer afraid.

When I’d touched the dark heart inside me in the basement, I’d felt intoxicated by the power, so overcome that it had set me ablaze. Now it felt like the power and I were one, that it moved easily within me. It would not harm me, or overtake me. It would do as I bid.

I flew toward Titania and wrapped my arms around her before she realized what was happening. Her arms were locked in my embrace. I let the darkness flow from me until it covered her, smothered her, drowned her magic in mine.

I turned the two of us upside down and arrowed toward the churning waves of Lake Michigan.

“What are you doing?” she shouted, her face furious. I could feel her magic pulsing weakly against me, but it was a small thing battering against a castle wall.

I said nothing, only held her tight to me. The darkness wrapped around her again, smothering the light that burned inside her.

Her white skin grew sickly gray, and the sparkle faded from her beautiful jeweled eyes.

“How can this be?” she said.

Then we broke the surface of the water, and went under.

It was as dark as the ocean here in the depths of the lake, and just as strange. Silence surrounded us, and still my magic worked my will without direction. The seeping, oozing darkness continued to bind Titania like a cocoon.

She struggled feebly against me, but she could not fight this. This was not a blazing magic that she could battle with her own power. This was as insidious and inevitable as the night itself, a creeping shadow that gave her no quarter.

I swam deeper, unaffected by the lack of oxygen, until I reached the very bottom of the lake. Then I removed one arm from Titania, but she no longer struggled. Her eyes were closed, and her face was still and gray as stone.

I blasted a hole in the bottom of the lake, prepared to drop Titania in it and then bury her forever. Then I hesitated. The black spell had pushed Titania’s magic to the limit, but it was still not completely doused. There was still a little flicker of flame inside her. I could sense it, like a moth battering against a streetlight. If I left her alive, she would find a way to return, to take up where she had left off.

I couldn’t leave her alive. And I would never have an opportunity such as this again.

But the problem of the magical blowback remained. I didn’t want Chicago to be leveled by an earthquake when Titania’s magic was released.

Send her through a portal.

I don’t know whether it was my own thought, or a thought directed by the magic working through me, or a message from Lucifer or Puck or Gabriel. It didn’t matter, really. I knew what I had to do now.

I closed my eyes, sent my power reaching out into the far-distant galaxies of the universe, looking for a broken place, a place that would not be harmed by Titania’s destruction.

When I found it, a place light-years from my own blue planet, I fixed its location in my mind. Then I opened a portal in the silt at the bottom of the lake, a special portal that looked like a window. On the other side of it, I could see a gray rock floating in space, circling a dead star.

I concentrated on the little light flickering inside Titania. Then, with one final push of magic, I crushed it out.

I dropped Titania through the portal just as she started to come apart.

I watched as the High Queen of Faerie disintegrated, piece by piece, into motes of dust on the surface of that faraway place.

Suddenly there was a tremendous explosion, like a star going supernova. I heard nothing. I felt nothing. I could only see the burst of light through the portal.

When the starburst was over, the little gray rock floating in space was nothing but a memory.

And so went Titania. I wondered who would rule Faerie now that Bendith and the queen were dead, and Oberon was diminished.

I swam to the surface of the lake and flew up into the blue sky, turning my face to the sunshine. The darkness still swam inside me, a live thing, and I knew that a line had been crossed. I would never be able to rid myself of it. The shadow was a part of me now.

Inside my heart, I could feel Lucifer radiating his approval.

I flew toward the city. I should have been elated, but instead I was just exhausted. Titania was gone, but I still had no home to return to. I had embraced the darkness inside me to save myself and the life of my child, but what price would I pay?

Anything that made Lucifer happy couldn’t be a good thing.

I turned north, automatically heading toward the site of my old home. Maybe I could pitch a tent in the yard or something. I was nearly to the lakeshore when I saw three figures flying toward me.

I paused and peered at the people coming into focus. It wasn’t Nathaniel or J.B. It was Bryson, and two other Agents I didn’t know. They were dressed in the black military fatigues of the Agency retrieval unit.

I rubbed my forehead tiredly. “Really? I have to deal with this now?”

I waited for them to reach me. Bryson looked surprised when he saw that I wasn’t going to make them chase me; then his expression grew wary. They stopped a few feet from me in the air, almost as if we had accidentally met on the street.

“Madeline Black,” Bryson said. “You are under arrest for defying the law of the Agency and willfully crossing into the land of the dead. You have fraternized illegally with a dead soul. You will submit to our authority and return to the Agency for sentencing, or else you will have the Retrievers set upon you.”

“Okay,” I said.

Bryson’s eyebrows winged up to his hairline. “Okay?”

“Okay, call the Retrievers,” I said. “Bring your armies. Do whatever you want. But I am not going with you.”

“You are not a law unto yourself, whatever you may think,” Bryson said angrily.

“Oh, yes, I am,” I said.

Bryson indicated to the other two with a shake of his head that they should grab me.

I gave them a look. “I just killed one of the oldest creatures in the universe. Are you sure that you want to be the one who tries to force me to come back to the Agency with you?”

Bryson’s lackeys paused and glanced at each other.

“Captain . . .” one of them began.

“I will call the Retrievers if you will not do your duty,” Bryson said, with the air of a magician pulling his best trick.

The other two visibly cowered at the thought of being in the presence of the Retrievers. I tried flying around Bryson, who grabbed my arm.

“Where are you going?” Bryson shouted. He was starting to look a little unhinged, like he just couldn’t believe that I would ignore him so completely.

“I told you, do what you want. The Agency has no authority over me anymore,” I said, shaking him off like he was a flea.

“I am going to enjoy watching the Retrievers eat your soul,” Bryson hissed through his teeth.

He pulled a small silver whistle from his pants pocket and put it in his mouth. He blew into it, but I didn’t hear anything.

“You use a dog whistle to call the Retrievers?” I said.

“I have watched from afar as you have defied the Agency, defied the very laws of the universe,” Bryson said. “You cast off your Agent’s mantle, the sacred charge that was given to you. You entered the realm of the dead and brought forth a soul even when you knew that it was forbidden. You do as you please, over and over, and I am sick of it. Now I will watch the Retrievers tear you to pieces, and I will enjoy it.”

I don’t know whether it was my intense exhaustion or the artificial boost I was getting from my acknowledgment of the totality of my power, but I just couldn’t get that worked up about the arrival of the Retrievers. Which was strange. They had been the bogeymen under the bed for as long as I’d been an Agent, and I’d fled through a portal to another world just so I wouldn’t have to tangle with them.

But now I couldn’t care less. “Let them come,” I said to Bryson.

“Agent Black,” one of the other Agents said.

I looked at him. He was young, muscular, and looked like the type who was dedicated to his job. His eyes were worried.

“I’m not an Agent anymore,” I said to him.

“But . . . shouldn’t you be running? Or fighting? Or something?” he said. “The Retrievers are pretty bad.”

“I know,” I said softly. “I’ve seen them before.”

“You have?” the third Agent said.

I nodded. “And a whole lot of other stuff that no one should ever have to see.”

A street strewn with bodies after Ramuell had destroyed it. A cave full of imprisoned nephilim, calling for my blood. My own body missing its heart, my soul floating high above my broken shell.

A maze comprised of my darkest fears and deepest secrets. A room full of children tied to machines that took away their memories.

Gabriel falling, his blood pooling in the snow.

A plaza piled high with bodies, and vampires pouring from the dark underground into the sunlight.

More demons and monsters than I could count dying beneath my sword.

Antares. Ramuell. Baraqiel. Amarantha. Therion. Azazel. Titania.

Alerian rising from the ocean. Puck’s eyes flashing with mischief. Lucifer smiling.

Yes, I had seen a whole lot of stuff no one should ever have to see.

“But, Agent Black—” the first Agent said again.

“She’s not an Agent,” Bryson spat. “She is a rogue, and should be treated as such. Stop trying to help her or you’ll be cited for insubordination.”

I looked at the first Agent and shrugged. “Don’t worry about me, kid.”

The Agent’s face hardened. “It’s not right, sir. She’s pregnant.”

“Pregnant with a monster,” Bryson said. “Her child will be a plague upon the world.”

I shook my head. “Seriously, Agent . . .”

“Hill,” the first guy said.

“Hill, don’t get yourself into trouble with the Agency,” I said. “It’s not worth the aggravation.”

Hill tilted his head to one side. “You’re really not worried about the Retrievers.”

“Nope,” I said.

I put my hands in my pockets and turned south. That was the direction they were coming from. I could feel them now that they had entered our dimension. I didn’t know where they were kept normally, but it wasn’t on our plane of existence.

Hill and the other Agent backed away a little from me. Bryson watched me avidly, practically salivating.

I started to whistle.

The Retrievers approached, their pace quickening. I sensed their anticipation. They longed for a soul to take, for a purpose. They had spent so long inside their prison.

“The Retrievers are your prisoners?” I asked Bryson.

“If we did not imprison them, they would run rampant over the world, devouring souls,” Bryson said dismissively. “We allowed them their lives. Now they can fulfill their desires in the service of the Agency.”

“You need to stop hiding behind the Agency like it’s some kind of untouchable institution,” I said. “You guys have made plenty of mistakes. And one of them was trying to chain creatures that should never have been chained.”

“You sound like you feel sorry for the Retrievers, Agent Black,” Hill said.

“I do,” I said softly.

As they got closer and closer I could feel their pain, the centuries they had suffered in the Agency’s prison. Even now, when they were allowed to run free, chains bound them so that they would be forced to return to the place they hated.

Darkness appeared in the distance. The Retrievers would be here at any moment.

When I saw the Retriever at my house, just before I’d leapt into the portal, I’d had a sense of something huge and horrible, something impossible for the human mind to understand. They sped toward us as giant, inky black shadows, contorting in monstrous shapes.

I pulled my hands from my pockets, and held them out in front of me in supplication as the Retrievers drew near. The creatures howled as they approached, their maws open, ready to devour me.

And then they stopped.

The dark magic inside me poured from my hands, reached out to the Retrievers. The creatures seemed confused. They were supposed to attack me. I poured my compassion into the darkness, and settled it over them like a balm. One of them whimpered, and the three creatures seemed to shrink in confusion. Now the Retrievers looked like nothing more than miserable, confused dogs. They looked like oversized mastiffs, blacker than the night before the dawn.

In this form it was easy to see the silver cuffs that each Retriever had around two legs. The cuffs were held there by the magic and power of the Agency. These were the bindings that forced them to return to their prison after they did the Agency’s bidding.

I studied the spell for a moment, and then waved my hand at the Retrievers. The cuffs disappeared into smoke.

The Retrievers approached me cautiously, wound around my ankles, sought affection from my petting hands. The new magic inside me let me know what they were feeling. They had not been free for eons, and I had given them this gift. They would serve me willingly. They would destroy every member of the Agency if I asked them to.