Black City

Samiel looked doubtful. Every time we split up something bad happens.

“I need to know that the three of you are safe,” I said.

What about my need to know that you’re safe?

“I’ll be fine,” I said. “I’ve survived worse than a pix.”

You died once.

“And I came back,” I said, giving him a half smile.

I wouldn’t count on that happening a second time.

Jude barked in agreement.

“Please, just get Chloe out and get home. Trust that I can take care of myself.”

Samiel looked at me for a long moment. Finally, he nodded. I’ll text you when we’re home.

“Okay,” I said. The world went wobbly for a second, and I realized my eyes were filling. I swallowed hard, willing the tears away. If Samiel thought I was worried, he wouldn’t leave. But I’d had a strange feeling for a moment, the feeling that one of us was not going to make it home.

Jude nudged my leg with his nose. I kneeled down so I could look him in the eyes. I could see his reluctance as clearly as if he’d shouted it. Jude fancied himself my protector, and he’d never completely trusted Nathaniel.

“Take care of Samiel and Chloe,” I whispered, and put my arms around his neck, burying my face in his fur. “I will be home soon.”

He rubbed his nose across my cheek, and then the two of them disappeared into the stairwell. I knelt on the floor, staring after them, hoping I hadn’t made a mistake. Hoping I hadn’t sent them to their deaths.

“You cannot be responsible for everyone’s lives,” Nathaniel said quietly from behind me.

I stood and faced him. “That’s what love is. When you love someone you’re responsible for them, and they you. Until you understand that, I’ll never believe you when you say you care about me.”

“I do understand it,” he said. “But you are the only one that has ever made me feel this way.”

He seemed bewildered when he said this, like the feeling was some foreign disease that had invaded his body. I was all too aware of the fact that we were alone, and that he was not Gabriel.

“Let’s kill that demon so we can go home,” I said abruptly. “Beezle will probably have eaten everything in the pantry by now.”

Nathaniel didn’t say anything else as we silently agreed that further discussion on this topic was just going to make us both uncomfortable.

We took the stairway to the next level, peering cautiously around the fire door. There was a little more activity here—a nurse moving from room to room, patients being pushed along the corridor by an orderly—but it wasn’t the panicked rushing of folks who’d just seen a vision from their nightmares. I looked at Nathaniel, and he shook his head.

We skipped the next floor since Jude and Samiel were there, and presumably any monsters would be dispatched by them.

Nathaniel had dropped the cloak that covered us when we entered the hospital. I understood why. It required a lot of energy to maintain a veil and stay on your guard against demonic attacks. It was doubly hard to keep four people covered.

The thing was, Nathaniel’s wings were such an essential part of his appearance that I didn’t often think about them. Plus I was little preoccupied with finding the pix demon and not thinking too hard on what Nathaniel had said about my motivations.

So when we came face-to-face with a security guard on the next floor, I wasn’t thinking about the vampires, or the fact that all the humans were on edge. I wasn’t thinking that Nathaniel would look extremely strange to a normal.

We pushed through the door, and it was just unfortunate luck that the security guard stood there. And that his weapon was in his hand, and that he was ready to go off at the least provocation.

I was in front of Nathaniel, and the guard was a few feet in front of me. He turned as soon as he heard activity behind him, and while he was definitely tense, he might not have fired if he hadn’t seen Nathaniel’s wings.

“What the hell is that thing?” he shouted, and pulled the trigger. His hand was shaking, so his aim probably wasn’t as good as it normally would be. Likely it was the first time he had ever fired his weapon on the job.

Which was why the bullet hit me instead of Nathaniel. And why Nathaniel blasted the guard with nightfire as I fell to the ground, the bullet tearing through the soft flesh just under the joint of my shoulder, just above my heart. I screamed, not because it hurt but because it was too late for the guard. Nathaniel had killed him before my eyes.

I could feel the burning path where the bullet had torn through me, the wet stickiness of blood flowing from an open wound.

“Madeline,” Nathaniel said, already turning to me, falling to his knees beside me, the guard forgotten.

“What the hell did you do that for?” I shouted. Rather, I wanted to shout, but my voice barely rose above my normal speaking tone.

Inside me, my baby gave a little flutter, but nothing more. I guess a little physical distress was old news at this point.

The guard was prone on the ground, a smoking hole where his chest used to be. Farther down the hall behind him, a male doctor in a white lab coat stood frozen in place, his eyes wide.

Nathaniel scrabbled at my coat, pulled it away from my shoulder so that he could see the blood-soaked mess beneath. My sweater and shirt stuck to the open wound. He put his hand over the hole where the bullet had entered.

The warmth of the sun lit my blood, flowed from his hand and through the heart of me, healing the bullet wound as if it had never been. I sat up, still a little woozy. Blood loss is blood loss, whether your wound heals immediately or not. It takes a while to get your strength back if you’ve got anything bigger than a shaving cut.