Black City

I’d dropped my sword on the bridge—I’d heard it clatter on the pavement—and my magic was still burned out and useless.

Then there was a tremendous roar of rage, and the whole bridge shook. The vampire paused, the way spiders will when they know they’re about to get crushed under somebody’s heel. I could see nothing, but there was a sound of cracking pavement, and chunks of street smashed into me.

There was the ozone smell of nightfire. The vampire screamed, started to fall. I was falling, too, and then Nathaniel’s hand was somehow wrapped in my coat, holding me fast while the vampire descended into the river below. He pulled through the hole he’d smashed and rolled me into his arms.

“That was close,” I said, my voice muffled. My face was pressed against his bare chest.

He didn’t say anything. He just held me tight. It might have been pleasant under another circumstance, but I couldn’t move my arms and it was a little difficult to breathe.

“Nathaniel,” I said. “Nathaniel! I need oxygen.”

He finally released me, and I took several deep lungfuls of air.

“I should have been more cautious,” he said. “I am sorry.”

“Are you apologizing for not predicting the unpredictable?” I said. “I wasn’t looking for the vampire under the bridge, either. Although I probably should have been, given that I encounter monsters with abnormal frequency.”

“I feel like a fool,” Nathaniel said. “I had only just declared myself to you. I’d pronounced that I would protect you and your child, and a monster stole you from beneath my nose.”

“Don’t beat yourself up about it. It happens to me all the time. You know what’s weird, though? Why didn’t the vampire just eat me right away?”

“Perhaps it had gorged itself earlier and was planning on saving you for another meal,” Nathaniel said.

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. Don’t you think it would have at least drained me a little so I would be more compliant? It seemed it wanted to take me somewhere.”

“To its master, perhaps?” Nathaniel asked.

“That would be logical. If it was fetching me for a higher-ranking vampire, then it probably wouldn’t want to offend its boss by taking my blood.”

“Which then begs the question of why the vampire wanted you specifically.”

“Yeah. That’s not really a question I’d enjoy answering. I’m sure I won’t like the result, whatever it is.” I looked around. “Where’s my sword?”

“There,” Nathaniel said, pointing back toward the place where the vampire had grabbed me. “I could not lift it. It would not allow me to touch it.”

“But you gave me that sword,” I said. “It belonged to your father.”

“The sword seems to have given itself to you completely.”

Or maybe the sword of Lucifer recognized the blood of the Morningstar’s sworn enemy, but I wasn’t going to say that. Not yet, anyway. Not until I was 100 percent sure—but I was getting there. I wondered how Nathaniel would react if I was right. It might unhinge him. He put a lot of stock in the quality of his bloodline.

I fetched the sword, and then jogged back to Nathaniel. “Let’s get home.”

There was the distinct click of a safety being released behind us.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said.

We turned around slowly to face Bryson’s furious glare. He held a semiautomatic pistol, and it was pointed at me.

“What is your problem?” I asked. “Has it escaped your attention that the city has been overrun by vampires?”

“Sokolov wants you brought in. So you will be brought in,” Bryson said. “He’s had enough of your defiance.”

“Does he know you tried to shoot us out of the sky earlier?” I asked, thinking of Nathaniel’s shredded wing, our terrifying fall through the air. “Or am I wanted dead or alive?”

Bryson smiled briefly. “I am supposed to bring you in alive. But if there were an unfortunate accident, I believe Sokolov would understand.”

I was suddenly angry, so angry that I didn’t know what to do with all that energy. I was sick to death of being hounded by the shortsighted Agency when there were more important problems at hand.

My magic leapt to the fore, and my power pulsed through the night.

Nathaniel put his hand on my shoulder. “Ease down, unless you wish to destroy the bridge while we are still on it.”

The darkness was filled with light, and it was coming from me.

“Hear this, Bryson,” I said, and my voice was different. There was a power and a promise in it. “If you attempt to take, threaten or harm me or my friends again, then I will destroy you so utterly that the world will not even recall that you ever existed.”

I could crush him like a bug. His gun was a toy, a meaningless thing that he used to feel powerful. I blasted his hand with nightfire and the weapon clattered to the ground. I stalked toward him, and Bryson, super-soldier of the Agency, backed away from me.

“You have been broken by one of my kind before,” I said. “But obviously not enough. The pain you felt then will be nothing compared to what horrors you will suffer at my hands.”

I could do it. I knew I could. I could make him hurt. The power was in me. There was a dark shadow in my heart, and it urged me onward.

“Madeline!” Nathaniel said behind me, and his hand roughly pulled me back. “Madeline! You are not yourself. Think.”