Black City

I remembered something Puck had said when Lucifer and Puck had encountered each other on my front lawn. He’s been going someplace he shouldn’t. He’s been a naughty, naughty boy.

“Lucifer’s been coming here, to see you,” I said. “This is where he’s been going when he’s out of touch.”

“Yes,” Evangeline said. “That is how much I meant to him, that he has spurned death to be with me.”

“But he’s not supposed to,” I said. “Death is final. Death is forever. I met Gabriel by accident, in a dream, and the Agency wanted my head for it. Lucifer can’t come here. He’s breaking the rules.”

“As are you, by being here now,” Evangeline said.

“I didn’t come here on purpose. I would rather eat a basket of wriggling spiders than spend five seconds with you,” I said. “Lucifer can’t keep doing this. He has to know that there will be a price to pay. There always is when you bend the laws of magic.”

“Lucifer would gladly pay any price the universe asked of him, especially now,” she said, and she stroked her hand over her belly.

I could see the taut roundness under her gown, the first budding of her pregnancy.

“Are you kidding me?” I said. “Not only has Lucifer somehow found a way to cross into the land of the dead, but he’s managed to knock you up?”

“Are you frightened, little granddaughter? Scared that you will no longer be Lucifer’s first and most precious once my son is born?” Evangeline sneered.

“I’m scared, but not for the reasons you think,” I said, staring at her belly in horror. “You’ve got a child conceived in death growing inside you. How do you know it won’t be some abomination unleashed on the world?”

Evangeline smiled, and my blood turned to ice.

“I’m counting on it.”

Then I woke again, to biting cold and to searing pain. My head was in J.B.’s lap and Nathaniel’s face was over mine. He knelt beside me, his hands on my hands, and the light of the sun was healing the burns. It hurt almost as much getting damaged in the first place. I screamed again and again, tears running down my face. J.B.’s hands on my shoulders held me in place.

Lucifer’s sword was still in my grasp. Jude, Samiel and Chloe crowded around. Beezle was on the ground next to my head, peering at me like I was something under a microscope.

After a while Nathaniel finished, his face drawn and sweating. “I did the best I could, but they will always look a little damaged.”

He pried my fingers off the sword one by one. “You can let it go now, Madeline.”

I waited for the waves of pain to recede so that I could think. Then I held my hands up to my face. I expected to see ridges of deep scars, like the victim of a fire. Instead there was a fine webbing of shadows running from the tips of my fingers up to my wrists in all the places where the creature’s blood had touched.

The result was like a faded tattoo. Well, it wasn’t any worse than the scars on my face from the Hob, or the mess on my neck from the pix demon. All things considered, it was pretty good, actually. I still had all my digits in working order, and in my book that was a win.

“Where are we?” I croaked.

“In the wastelands,” Nathaniel said. “I would not have been able to heal you otherwise.”

“How did we get out?”

“Unbelievably, your advice was sound,” Beezle said. “We just kept going forward. I guess Titania figured she didn’t need any more tricks with that monster in there.”

“The quantity of bones would suggest that the monster had been a sufficient deterrent in the past,” Nathaniel said dryly.

I sat up, rubbing my eyes. “Well, we escaped the faerie kingdom.”

“For now,” Beezle said ominously. “But we’re still stuck in this netherworld until you can get your granddaddy on the line.”

“And Titania can and will certainly send someone after you now that you’ve managed to get away again,” J.B. said.

I touched my stomach, felt the reassuring flutter of little wings. This was going to be one hardy kid when he was finally born—if his mother survived that long.

“That’s the least of my worries,” I said grimly, thinking of Lucifer and Evangeline. I didn’t say anything about my vision, though. I wanted to have a little talk with Lucifer first.

The snake tattoo on my palm wriggled, as if it knew I was thinking about Lucifer.

“Tell him I want to see him,” I said to my hand.

“You know, you look insane when you do that,” Beezle said.

My palm tingled, and then I felt Lucifer drawing near.

“He’s coming,” I said, getting to my feet with J.B.’s assistance.

“You should be quoting Macbeth, you know,” said Lucifer’s voice behind us. “I always liked that scene with the three witches.”

“Nobody here needs reminding that you’re something wicked,” I said, turning around calmly to face him while everyone else jumped in surprise.

Lucifer started to speak, caught sight of Nathaniel, and paused. His eyes narrowed as he stalked past me until he was face-to-face with Nathaniel. Nathaniel stared back at Lucifer with his brand-new eyes.

“That little f**k,” Lucifer said.

“I think you mean Puck,” Beezle said.

“No, I meant what I said,” Lucifer replied, and there was a low current of anger mixed with amusement in his voice. “What did he intend? For you to kill me at the most opportune time?”