Black Spring (16 page)

Lucifer seemed to grow in size as we watched. I remember he had done this once before, to try to stare me down when I’d been insubordinate. Puck seemed vaguely amused by Lucifer’s display. Alerian appeared bored.

I felt the waves of frustration and anger coming from Lucifer, and then it seemed like there was more pressure in the air than there had been before.

“He’s trying to break the circle,” I said, holding my baby a little closer. After the initial bout of crying, he had settled down, and now seemed to be looking around in curiosity with his unfocused eyes.

“The circle should hold,” J.B. said. “He’s not in his kingdom. He’s in mine. This is my ground, and my power comes from here.”

“But we can’t stay here forever,” Jude said.

“No, you cannot stay there forever,” Lucifer repeated, and he pressed his will against the circle again.

J.B. seemed awfully confident that the protection would hold, but I wasn’t sure. Lucifer was a lot stronger than J.B., even if this was J.B.’s home ground. And Lucifer was very determined.

“Nathaniel,” I said, but he had anticipated me.

The portal opened in front of us, and through it I could see the panting, happy faces of Lock and Barrel.

“See ya,” I said to Lucifer with a salute, and stepped into the portal with my baby snuggled close to me and Beezle on my shoulder.

My grandfather’s roar of rage followed me into the portal.

My son began to cry as soon as we entered. I couldn’t blame him. It felt horrible to pass through a portal when you were an adult. I couldn’t imagine what it felt like for a little baby, so recently snug and warm inside his mom and now exposed to a world that was loud and cold and
hurt
.

A moment later I was in my own living room, with the dogs clustering around me. I sat down on the floor, exhausted, relieved to be home and safe. Lucifer could not get me here. The power of the domicile was absolute over a creature like him.

Lock and Barrel stuck their wet noses into the bundle in my arms, sniffing the baby. He stopped crying as soon as the dogs approached, and I heard him make a little coo.

The horror of everything I’d been through—how close I’d come to losing my son forever—hit me then. When Nathaniel emerged from the portal, he found me weeping on the floor, holding my baby tight to me. Beezle sat on my shoulder, patting the side of my head. He flew away with a sigh of relief when Nathaniel arrived.

“Maybe you can get her to calm down,” he said.

He knelt down beside me, put his lips in my hair and his arms around me. “You are safe. You are safe. Lucifer can’t get him here.”

The others climbed out of the portal. They all dispersed to perform various tasks—Jude to dress, Samiel to cook, J.B. to walk to the front window and glance worriedly out. Jack stood with hands in his pockets, looking awkward.

J.B. went still as he lifted the curtain aside. “There’s a giant squid in the middle of the street.”

I laughed. It was a wet, surprised laugh, coming so close on the heels of my tears. “Beezle told you there was a squid.”

“And fire,” J.B. said, wrinkling his nose. “I can’t believe anyone on this block wants to keep living here. I wouldn’t be able to eat if I knew that thing was outside my front door.”

“Imagine how I feel,” Beezle said. “Calamari is one of my favorite foods, and I may never be able to stomach it again.”

“I’m not worried,” J.B. said. “I’m sure you’ll find something else to stuff yourself with.”

“Let’s get you into the shower,” Nathaniel said.

He helped me up and into the bathroom, throwing away the jacket that was wrapped around my waist. He held out his arms for the baby so I could take off my shirt.

I shrank back, holding my son to my chest. I didn’t want to let him go, not even for a second.

“I won’t let anything happen to him,” Nathaniel said gently. “I will care for him as if he were my own.”

“What if Lucifer comes?” I whispered. “He’ll figure out where I am soon enough.”

“Yes,” Nathaniel said. That was one of the things I liked about Nathaniel. He didn’t try to sugarcoat. “But he is not here now. I am. And you need to clean yourself. While you do this, I will wash the baby.”

“He needs special stuff,” I said helplessly. “Like baby shampoo and whatever. I don’t have any of that.”

“Madeline,” he said, and his voice was full of infinite patience. “I know how to do magic.”

“Right,” I said. I still didn’t want to let my baby go. He was mine.

“Madeline,” he said again, and he held his hands out. “I was the first person to hold him. Trust me.”

I did trust him. Because you couldn’t love without trust. And finally, after everything we had been through together, after he had protected me from harm over and over, I did trust him. I loved him.

But again, the circumstances didn’t seem right to tell him. I handed Nathaniel my son, and knew he would take care of him.

I took off my pajama shirt, shoved it in the trash bin (I seemed to be throwing away a lot of clothing lately) and climbed in the shower. I turned the water up as hot as I could make it and scrubbed all over until I felt really clean. My legs looked even worse than I’d thought. Birth is a messy thing.

My belly felt strangely empty. I poked the formerly taut bump and everything there kind of jiggled around.

“Oh, that’s sexy,” I said.

I turned off the water and climbed out of the shower, wrapping up in a bathrobe and putting a towel around my head. Nathaniel was nowhere to be seen.

When I entered the hallway I could hear a lot of ruckus coming from the kitchen. I padded toward the noise in my bare feet.

Nathaniel was washing the baby in the kitchen sink. Beezle was sitting on his shoulder, giving him instructions, which Nathaniel ignored. Jude and Samiel were making goofy faces at my son, and J.B. was watching all of it with an indulgent smile on his face.

“Nothing like a baby to turn perfectly rational adults into a bunch of goofballs,” J.B. said. “He is pretty cute, though. He looks just like you.”

I looked critically at my offspring, a tiny being cradled so gently in Nathaniel’s huge hands. “I can’t tell. He just looks little and wrinkly to me right now.”

“Gargoyle, make yourself useful and hand me that towel,” Nathaniel said, indicating a small baby towel with a blue elephant on it that was on the counter beside J.B.

“Where did we get that?” I asked. I knew for sure that I had not bought any baby stuff.

“I got it,” Beezle said. “Or rather, Samiel and I did.”

“When did you have time to go baby shopping with all the crises going on around here?”

Beezle shrugged as he handed the towel to Nathaniel. “We did it a while ago.”

Samiel nodded.
We didn’t think you would have time, so we got towels and diapers and pajamas and all that stuff.

“Don’t cry again,” Beezle said. “I just didn’t want the kid to spend the first week of his life wrapped in a dishcloth, which is what would have happened if we had left you in charge.”

I wiped at my eyes, which had grown suspiciously watery. “You’re probably right. Although I don’t even know how to put the diaper on him, so I’m not sure they’ll do me much good.”

Nathaniel very gently laid the baby on the counter. He covered him all over with baby lotion, expertly wrapped him up in a diaper, put him in a cute little footie sleeper that had lions printed on it, and topped off his head with a matching hat. His little baby wings tucked neatly inside the sleeper. No one would ever know they were there. Then Nathaniel presented my child to me, all perfect and clean and sweet-smelling, and said, “You should feed him.”

“With what?” I asked blankly as I snuggled my little bundle to my shoulder.

“With those,” Beezle said, pointing at my chest.

“Oh,” I said. I had no idea how that would work. It didn’t feel like there was any milk in there.

“You’ll figure it out,” J.B. said, correctly interpreting my expression.

“Oookay,” I said, and went into the bedroom to try to figure it out. Luckily the kid knew what to do, and after a bit he pulled away, so I figured he had gotten what he needed out of me.

I carefully placed him in the very center of the bed with no blankets around him—I had read enough of the pregnancy book to know that babies shouldn’t be surrounded with blankets because they could suffocate—and got dressed in some comfy sweats and thick socks. Then I lay down on the bed beside him, listening to him breathe. His eyes were closed and he was making little suckling motions with his lips.

I kissed his soft little cheek, and wished that Gabriel were here to see him. Gabriel would have been the world’s most amazing dad.

Of course, I reflected, Nathaniel seemed like he would be a pretty good stepfather. He already knew how to do the diaper-fu, which was more than I could say. I wondered how long I could pass off diaper duty by claiming incompetence.

I put my head down on the mattress, just watching my son’s chest rise and fall with his quiet little breaths. I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew the baby was screaming, the house was shaking, and there was noise like thunder. Lightning flashed outside the bedroom window.

Either there was an earthquake in Chicago, or the apocalypse had arrived.

Nathaniel appeared in the doorway. “Lucifer is outside. As you may guess, he is not very happy.”

I scooped my son up and followed Nathaniel into the living room. All the men had washed and changed into clean clothes, and there were the remains of several take-out pizzas on the table. Beezle was perched on the mantel, reading the pregnancy book I’d never finished. The dogs were on the floor, sleeping.

My stomach rumbled at the sight of the pizza. “Did you save any for me?”

“Pizza isn’t good for the baby,” Beezle announced.

“The baby isn’t going to be eating the pizza,” I said.

“Oh, yes, he is,” Beezle said. “Whatever you eat, he eats. And I don’t think pepperoni is good flavoring for milk.”

“You, of all people, will not be monitoring my food intake for nutritive value,” I said. “Your body probably hasn’t seen anything resembling a vitamin in decades.”

Samiel, Jude, J.B. and Jack stood in the front picture window, looking out. I handed the baby to Nathaniel so I could go see what they were all gawping at.

The floor trembled, and I stumbled into Samiel, who caught me and set me upright.

He’s trying really hard to take down the house,
Samiel signed, pointing outside.

My grandfather stood in the center of the street, again flanked by Alerian and Puck. They seemed to be combining their powers to break the protective spells Nathaniel and I had put around the house.

The squid had disappeared. I doubted the city had found a way to transport it in the short time we’d been home, so it was very likely one of the brothers had zapped it into oblivion.

Lucifer looked up at the window, as if he sensed my presence there. I gasped and stepped back. He wasn’t the handsome angel anymore, more beautiful than the sun. His face was twisted and dark, and his eyes burned red. Obsidian horns had sprouted from his head, and his beautiful feathered wings were the leathery appendages of a bat. This was the devil that so many had feared. This was the true Prince of Darkness, and he would not be thwarted by me.

“They can’t break the protection of the domicile,” I said. “Can they?”

“I don’t think so,” Beezle said. “I’ve been thinking about this for a while. The shifter was able to because, I think, he was not a fully formed creature. But Lucifer and Puck and Alerian—their personalities and their powers have been well established for eons. The magic that protects a home would recognize them and keep them out. However, they can try to break the spells you two put around the house.”

“And if they do, what then?” I said, stepping away from the window.

“Only the power of the home will stand between you and them,” Beezle said. “And I imagine they can find a way to make us pretty miserable with just one thin layer of protection between us and Lucifer’s rage.”

“You seem very calm about all this,” I said.

He looked up from the pregnancy book. “Either I’m in a food coma or I just know you. Sooner or later you’ll come up with a solution. It will probably involve fire and destruction, but you’ll find a way to chase him off like you have everything else that’s ever come after you.”

I took the baby back from Nathaniel, shaking my head. “Everything else was nothing compared to Lucifer. I’ve never managed to beat Lucifer or his brothers at any game.”

“This isn’t a game,” Beezle reminded me.

“They’ve treated it as such,” I said. “They’ve twisted and manipulated and put me in untenable positions over and over again. And why are they teaming up all of a sudden? I thought they hated each other.”

Beezle shrugged. “Maybe they don’t. Not really. Not when it comes down to it. They are brothers.”

“Brothers who’ve gone to war time and again,” I said. “And
where
is Daharan in all this?”

Nathaniel and Beezle exchanged a familiar look. I raised my hand to stop them from saying anything.

“I’m sorry I mentioned his name. Don’t start,” I said.

The baby hadn’t stopped crying since the house started shaking. I rubbed his back, shushing him, and after a few moments he calmed down.

“Have you named him yet?” Nathaniel asked, putting his arm protectively around my shoulder.

I shook my head. “Nothing seems to sound right to me.”

“You could name him for his father,” Nathaniel said. He was obviously trying to distract me from the nightmare outside.

“He’s not a junior,” I said, going along with it. “He’s his own little self.”

“How about Nicholas?” Beezle said.

I wrinkled my nose. “Nope.”

“Scott? Michael? Jonquil?”

“Hey,” J.B. said.

“I wouldn’t do that to my kid. Sorry, J.B.,” I said.

“Don’t be. There’s a reason why I go by my initials,” he said.

“Yeah, and your initials don’t even stand for Jonquil whatever,” Beezle said. “Because before we knew your real name and Maddy was annoyed with you, she called you ‘Jacob Benjamin.’”

“If your name was Jonquil, you’d have another name, too,” J.B. said. “Besides, it’s not like Jacob Benjamin is a random choice. It was my father’s name for me. And it is my legal human name.”

The house continued to be battered by the storm outside, the physical manifestation of Lucifer’s anger.

“You know, I don’t really get it,” I said, and I was surprised at the calm in my voice. Lucifer was trying to shake my house to the ground in order to kidnap my child and I wasn’t feeling nearly as panicked about this as I thought I would. “Why is he so bound and determined to have my baby? It sort of made sense when I was his last link to Evangeline. But now he’s got the kid he and Evangeline conceived in the land of the dead.”

“But that kid is a weird freaky monster,” Beezle said. “He can hardly present a child like that as his right hand and heir in front of the court of the Grigori. Angels are very vain creatures.”

“So what you’re saying is that even though Lucifer has paid a lot of lip service to loving all of his children the same, he really loves the photogenic ones more?” I asked.

Nathaniel shook his head. “I do not think it has anything to do with Lucifer’s vanity—at least, not in the way that the gargoyle proposes. His pride has been hurt by your refusal to give in, to allow yourself to be manipulated. You escaped from his home in front of his court and his guests. He cannot allow that slight to pass.”

“And he also wants my child,” I said.

“And he also wants your child,” Nathaniel acknowledged. “As for why he wants this particular child so badly—well, we have all known that Lucifer can see the future.”

My fingers tightened on the baby, just for a moment. “You think he’s got some kind of special fate? Don’t say that. Don’t tell me that just by being born he’s been condemned to carry out some sacred mission. I grew up knowing that, hearing that it was so important to be an Agent, that without me the souls of the dead would wander the planet without a purpose. And I hated it. I hated knowing I would never be free, that I would always be shackled to that one destiny.”

“You broke free of your destiny,” J.B. reminded me. “And made Sokolov and the Agency very angry in the process.”

“Yes, but how could I have known that would happen? Nobody had ever escaped the Agency before.”

“Nobody ever escaped the Maze before, either,” J.B. said. “You’re special, Maddy. And it stands to reason that your child will be, too. Lucifer has claimed that he can’t see the future perfectly, but he saw it well enough to know that if you and Gabriel married, there would be a child. Your baby will do
something
in the future, for good or ill, that Lucifer wants to control. If you stack that on top of his fanatical need to keep his family close and his wounded pride at your actions, you get this.”

He gestured out the window. I didn’t need to approach the glass this time to see what was going on. Lucifer’s soul, his essence, whatever you wanted to call it, was rising out of his physical body and becoming a huge demonic manifestation in front of the house. First the tips of his horns passed the window, then his burning red eyes, then his twisted mouth and bared teeth.

I sincerely hoped that my neighbors had run away or were buttoned up tight in their basements. Collateral damage seemed like a very strong possibility at this point.

Suddenly a tremendous sound came from the roof. I looked at Nathaniel in alarm.

“He’s trying to break through the roof,” I said.

“If there’s a hole in the house, he might be able to construe that as an invitation and get around the protection of the domicile,” Beezle said, putting up his little hands in a defensive gesture when I glared at him. “I’m not sure. I’m just saying.”

“I’m not dealing with a hole in the roof on top of everything else,” I said, handing the baby to Nathaniel. The snake tattoo on my palm suddenly burned bright, like a glowing coal, and I cried out. “That’s it. I’m going outside to talk to him.”

“I do not think that is a wise idea,” Nathaniel said, handing the baby to Samiel. “But if you insist—as I imagine you will—I am going with you.”

“In the state Lucifer is in, he might kill you just because you’re in front of him,” I said. “No, you stay inside.”

“Madeline,” Nathaniel said. “Why will you not understand? You do not have to do everything alone. We are stronger together. And I would not be the man who loves you if I allowed you to face such danger while I hid inside.”

I did understand. I did. But the feelings I had for Nathaniel were new and complicated and still kind of hard to look at, and I didn’t want to lose him just as I was starting to figure things out. The image of Gabriel, run through with my father’s sword, falling in the snow with blood pooling around him—that image would never leave me. I didn’t want to see Nathaniel vaporized by Lucifer, and told him so.

“I do not think Lucifer will be able to do such a thing,” Nathaniel said. “My father is out there. He may have no love for me. He may have been willing to sacrifice me for his own ends. But I do not believe he will allow Lucifer to kill me in a fit of rage. Puck, I think, still hopes I will come around to his way of thinking. It would be more beneficial to him to keep me alive.”

“That won’t help if Lucifer blasts you before Puck realizes what’s going on,” I said.

“Puck can catch the starlight in his teeth,” Nathaniel said. “He is a creature who has not even remotely shown the depth of his power. If Lucifer tried to blast me, as you say, then Puck would be able to stop him if he so desired.”

“There’s a lot of ‘ifs’ in there,” I said.

“Madeline, it is this simple. If you go, I go. You will not be able to stop me, and if necessary, the others will aid me in holding you here.” He looked at Jack, Jude, J.B. and Samiel, who all nodded in agreement.

“I knew that sooner or later all you men would gang up on me,” I said. “I should have thought about this earlier and got some nice, supportive girlfriends.”

“And what would you have talked about with these mythical women?” Beezle asked. “Your macramé hobby?”

“Fine,” I said to Nathaniel. “Let’s go.”

J.B. and Jude immediately fell in behind him.

“I’m not missing this,” J.B. said firmly. “And Lucifer can’t kill me without dealing with repercussions from all of Faerie. Puck is the High King of Faerie, so I think that any safety that applies to Nathaniel from that quarter would also apply to me.”

“I’m not letting you go outside to face him on your own,” Jude growled. “I watched one person I love fall at his hands. I won’t let it happen again.”

I looked at the three of them, and thought of everything we had all been through. We had started this journey together, and it was only right that we should finish it that way.

Because I was going to finish it. If I stepped outside that door, I wanted it to be the end of my association with Lucifer forever. I was no longer willing to deal with a temporary accord or a brief call of truce. I did not want to be Lucifer’s plaything for the rest of my life. Nor did I want my son to face the constant threat of his loving great-grandfather’s attention.

I turned to Samiel, who had the baby nestled in one arm. My son had fallen asleep, his tiny chest rising and falling with his soft breath. Beezle had dropped the pregnancy book and flown over to sit on Samiel’s shoulder. They both stared down at his little face in fascination. The Retrievers had woken up and had their heads on Samiel’s knees. Both of them also stared at the baby, occasionally snuffling at his head.

“You keep him safe,” I said to Beezle.

“Like I would let anything happen to him,” Beezle said, waving me away. “Now, go. Be a heroine and all that.”

Jack held his hands up. “I don’t need to be a close-up witness to this. I’ll stay here and take notes through the window.”

“Gee, thanks,” I said. He probably would take notes through the window. And then he would publish them as breaking news on his blog, along with his personal account of his time in Lucifer’s prison. I still thought he was cruising for a run-in with something big and bad and intolerant of having its news released on the Internet, but Jack seemed to have rebounded from his ordeals pretty quickly.

I started down the stairs, still in my comfy sweats. I didn’t exactly look powerful and intimidating. I didn’t have makeup on or a perfectly coiffed hairstyle. I didn’t even have the sword that I had kept so close to me for so long. It seemed like the sword, which was tied to Lucifer, would probably choose the master who forged it over the person who had carried it for a few months.

No, I didn’t look like much. And maybe to the average person neither did the ragged band behind me. But all of us had defied expectation in one way or another, over and over again. That had to count for something.

“What are you planning on doing when you get outside?” Nathaniel asked.

“I didn’t have so much of a plan as a general idea,” I said.

“Which means she hasn’t got a clue and she’s just going to roll with whatever happens,” J.B. said from behind Nathaniel. “You should know better by now.”

“Yes, I should,” said Nathaniel.

“You don’t have to sound so agreeable when you insult me,” I said, but I wasn’t really annoyed.

As we got closer to the end of the stairs my fear was rising. I wasn’t really sure what I would do at all. I had said “talk” to Lucifer, but he obviously wasn’t in a talking mood. The roof-pounding continued, and plaster was falling down from the ceiling.