Black City

I missed the anchor’s lead-in to the clip, but I didn’t need it. The meaning was clear enough.

A dark-haired, green-eyed vampire sat at the head of a long wooden table. Behind him was a wall of gray stone with no identifying characteristics. The vampire looked young, but that didn’t mean anything. He could have been turned hundreds of years before. The camera stayed close to the vampire so that the viewer could not see the rest of the room.

“Greetings, citizens of Chicago,” the vampire said, and there was a smugness in his silky voice that made me want to punch him in the face. “I am Therion, lord of the Fifth Court of the United States, headquartered here in your fair city. You may have noted the presence of my brethren.”

He smiled when he said this, and showed his fangs. “We have always lived among you, keeping to the shadows. However, recent advances in medical science, shall we say, have allowed us to now walk with you under the sun.”

“Medical advances, my ass. The blood of Agents,” Chloe said angrily. “That piece of garbage Azazel practically drained us dry in the name of his experiments.”

Therion continued speaking on the screen. “I understand if you think we, ahem, seemed aggressive when first we emerged. Many of us have not seen the sun for several centuries. It made us somewhat unrestrained.”

He smiled again, and I said, “I want to hit that guy just on principle. He’s too smug to live.”

Jude growled his assent. “I hate vampires anyway. It’s no skin off my back to kill as many of ’em as I can get.”

Therion’s voice broke into our discussion. “However, we do not wish to live as monsters. We want to demonstrate that we can be reasonable. If you meet our demands, we will withdraw from the city and the citizenry may safely return. Then we can draw up a plan for a peaceful coexistence between vampires and humans.”

“He’s lying,” I said. “If we give them what they want, they’ll have no motivation to withdraw. Why would they cede the city when they’ve already taken it?”

Nobody answered me. Everyone knew the answer to that question.

Therion spread his hands wide, and the camera panned backward, revealing the rest of the room. It was a cavernous stone hall, set with flickering torches. All around the room hung cages, and inside the cages were Agents. My heart stopped when I recognized them.

“Oh, my god. J.B.,” I said, and fell to my knees. “J.B.”

I crawled closer to the screen, searching the blur of faces for one face, the one person I needed to see. Therion spoke on, but nothing he said registered until I heard my name.

“…Madeline Black, this message is for you. If you willingly give yourself in exchange, then all of these innocents,” Therion said, and the way he emphasized “innocents” let me know that the choice of Agents for this display was no accident, “will go free. If not, then I will slaughter all of them three days hence, at the hour of noon, and then my horde will move out of Chicago. Human authorities will not be able to stop us. We will spread like a cancer over this country, and every person will succumb. But if Madeline Black will voluntarily turn herself in at a Vampire Authority station before three days have passed, then all of these people will go free, and we will withdraw. This is Madeline Black.”

Therion gestured, and an image appeared over the screen. It was a still image of me fighting the vampires in Daley Plaza. The photo had caught me in action, sword mid-swing, my other hand behind me, my overcoat billowing, my boots covered in blood.

I touched my hair, which now brushed the tops of my shoulders. In the picture it was still cropped close to my head.

“If you see this woman, or know her, I urge you to turn her in at your closest Vampire Authority station. Madeline Black, if you are listening, know that you can save millions of lives if you would simply come forward.”

The camera focused on Therion’s face again, the humans in cages disappearing from the screen. “I’ll be waiting.”

The picture went dark.

8

THE BROADCAST CUT BACK TO THE ANCHOR.

“No!” I slammed my hand against the TV screen. “No! I didn’t see him. I couldn’t find him.”

The news anchor started talking again. The still photo of me was up in the corner of the picture. Underneath the photo, in bright yellow letters, were the words, “Who is Madeline Black?”

“Shut the TV off,” Jude said.

“Maybe they’ll show the message again,” I said, my eyes glued to the screen, willing the newscaster to show me that precious few seconds again so that I could see whether J.B. was there, whether J.B. had been captured.

“Shut it off,” Jude repeated.

I felt his hands on my shoulders, prying me away from the screen. “J.B.,” I said.

Jude turned me to face him. “You don’t know that he’s there.”

“I can’t leave any of them there, but especially not him,” I said.

“You cannot be considering acquiescing to Therion’s demands,” Nathaniel said. “You said yourself that if the vampires had what they wanted, then they would have no motivation to withdraw.”

“That was before I found out they were holding Agents hostage,” I said. “And what in the name of the Morningstar is a Vampire Authority station?”

Samiel reentered the room carrying a plate with scrambled eggs, bacon and toast. I sat on the couch next to Chloe, who looked at my plate and then at Samiel. She blinked her eyes once.