Black Spring (8 page)

“Nah, the cameras don’t go that far,” he said.

He seemed to be relaxing, getting more comfortable as he told his story. Which meant on some subconscious level, he knew I had not done anything wrong. Anyone who truly believed they could be brutally slaughtered at any moment would not be bragging about the bugs he’d set around my house.

The shadow did not like this. It wanted Jack to be afraid. I pushed that feeling down, away from conscious thought. Of course I didn’t want Jack to fear me. I just wanted to get to the bottom of this mess.

“So what happened after Daharan left?” I asked.

“Well, I jumped on my bike and rode over here, thinking you might have left a window open or something and I could get in here and look around.”

“That’s called breaking and entering,” Jude said.

Jack waved his hand, as if to say breaking and entering was just a technicality in pursuit of truth and justice. “Anyway, I got here and I left my bike in the alley. I was gonna open the fence when I heard you talking to that girl. The one you killed.”

His voice had gone flat as he remembered. “Then I saw that one of the dogs was dead, and the girl looked angry. The back door to the house was open. And then the weirdest thing happened. It seemed like everything froze somehow—the girl, the dogs, me—and the only thing that could move was you. You turned your head, like you’d known I was there all along, and you smiled.”

Jack shuddered. The shapeshifter’s smile had clearly
not
been a pleasure to behold.

“Then—I don’t know how it happened or how I got there—but somehow I was standing in the doorway of the room next to this one. And the girl, she was being torn to pieces.” He was crying now, a steady stream of tears running down his face as he remembered. “Why did you make me watch that? Why did you make me see?”

He covered his eyes with his hands, his whole body shaking. I hated to press him, but I needed to know more. I needed to know how such a thing could have been done.

“But how did the shifter get in the house?” I said. “He shouldn’t have been able to cross the threshold to bring you and Chloe inside.”

Jack looked up, his face confused. “Shifter? What are you talking about?”

“How did I get inside?” I asked impatiently. “How did I kill Chloe in front of you?”

“How in the hell should I know?” Jack said, his face taut and angry. “I don’t know anything about magic. Like I said, somehow I was here and she was there and she was getting ripped up, and she was screaming . . .”

“Was I in the room?” I asked. “This is important, Jack.”

“No!” he shouted. “I don’t know why you’re asking me all these questions. I don’t know how you did it, but you were still outside and we were here and somehow she was being torn to pieces.”

Jude, Nathaniel and I shared a horrified glance.

“It doesn’t
need
to come in the house,” I said. I was cold all over, and I covered my belly with my hands. “It doesn’t need to see us or touch us to do its magic. We’re not safe here. We’re not safe anywhere.”

I glanced around at the walls of my house, feeling betrayed. This was my childhood home. It had always been a refuge against the madness outside. I should have been safe there. It had always sheltered me and mine.

All magical creatures were bound by the same basic laws. The sacredness of the domicile was paramount. You could not enter without an invitation. You were bound by the host’s terms of hospitality. These were basic things that all magical beings knew to be true.

Even the most powerful creatures in the universe were forced to submit, which was the reason why I had never invited Lucifer into my home. But this shifter had overcome the protection of the house, something I had never seen or heard of before.

It had obviously been forced to follow the letter of the law. Its physical body had remained outside. But its magic had somehow found a way through our defenses, lured my dogs outside and killed one of them, then dropped Jack and Chloe inside and killed Chloe by remote. If it could do all those things, then it didn’t matter if its body stayed outside. It could slaughter all of us in our sleep.

“We can’t fight it,” I said. “We can’t fight something that can look like any of us, smell like any of us. It can kill from a distance, and the rules of magic don’t appear to apply. How can I protect my baby against something like that?”

Nathaniel came to me then, put his arms around me, held me close. “We will find a way. We will increase the protection on the house. Daharan is more than powerful enough to plug the holes, so to speak. And if he is not, then we will go to Alerian again. It was he who created this creature. He should know how to stop it.”

I laughed bitterly. “The last encounter didn’t go so well. Did you already forget the giant sea creature that trashed the street? I don’t think Alerian is going to be volunteering to help us anytime in the near future.”

“I will not allow you to be terrorized in your own home. There must be something we can do, and I will discover it,” Nathaniel said.

We all heard the sound of footsteps descending the stairs. Jude immediately rushed out of the room to intercept.

I gave Nathaniel a panicked look. “I don’t want Samiel to see Chloe that way.”

“We will take him upstairs,” Nathaniel said, pulling away from me. “Should I tell him?”

“As gently as you can,” I said. “But don’t let him come downstairs, even if you have to knock him out.”

Nathaniel hurried out after Jude.

“Shit,” I said, leaning against the wall and rubbing my eyes. “It really should be me. I should be the one to tell him. I owe him that much.”

Jack Dabrowski had been observing all this rather avidly for someone who had just witnessed a traumatic event. Now he cocked his head to one side like a curious dog and spoke.

“So, am I to gather from all of this that you actually didn’t kill that girl and tie me up down here?”

“Of course I didn’t, you moron,” I said tiredly. “I told you I didn’t.”

“Excuse me,” Jack said stiffly. “I just witnessed something horrible and it may have confused me for a few moments.”

“You shouldn’t have been here in the first place,” I said. “I told you that—jeez, was it only this morning? This is turning into one of the longest days ever.”

“And there’s some kind of shapeshifter running around that duplicates anyone’s appearance?” he asked. “And that’s what actually murdered the girl and tied me up down here?”

“Yes,” I said. “And if that ends up on your blog, I will personally come to your house and take a sledgehammer to your computer.”

“Don’t you think people have a right to know that there is a creature running around that can copy the appearance of their loved ones, and then kill them while under the guise of that person?” he asked.

“No. All that will do is make everyone doubt those close to them, to create more fear and paranoia in a city that’s already seen plenty,” I said. “And anyway, it’s not a threat to the average individual. It’s only interested in me.”

“So it’s only a threat to anyone who hangs around you—is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes, and don’t you think you should take that as a hint to run as fast as you can away from here?” I said. “You saw what happened to Chloe. That could have just as easily been you. Why can’t you appreciate that?”

“I do,” he said, and he did appear sincere. “I know it could have been me. But it’s because it wasn’t me, because I saw it happen, that I need to warn everyone else. I don’t want anyone else to witness that.”

“I can’t believe this,” I said, and walked to the door of the storage area.

Jack started to follow me. I held up one hand, using my power to keep him in place.

“No, you stay here for now,” I said. “Until I figure out what to do with you.”

“You can’t do that,” he said angrily. “You have no right to keep me here.”

“I have every right,” I said. “I have people to protect, too. And I don’t need curiosity seekers hanging around the house getting eaten up by the bad things that come looking for me.”

I shut the door and put a spell around it to keep it sealed. Then I released the hold on Jack. A second later he was pounding on the door, yelling for me to let him out.

“He’d better not keep that up all night, or Daharan will come down here and gag him,” I said to myself.

I felt a little twinge of sick worry in my stomach as I slowly climbed the steps. Where
was
Daharan? If he had been at home, as he always was, the shifter wouldn’t have been able to kill Chloe or Stock. He might have even been able to capture the creature. We could be on our way to confront its master right this minute.

Instead I had a slaughtered friend in my storage room, and a trio of dogs turned to a duo. I didn’t feel safe in my own house, and I didn’t know what to do about it. I pushed open the kitchen door slowly. Nathaniel stood by the refrigerator. Jude was directly opposite him, leaning against the counter. Both of them looked helpless. Beezle perched next to the coffeemaker, his eyes sad. I couldn’t see Samiel.

I moved around Jude and found Samiel collapsed on the ground, his arms around his knees, his face buried in his arms. I waved the rest of them out of the room. They went, looking relieved. I approached Samiel cautiously. I didn’t know what he would think, or say. I didn’t know if he would blame me.

He looked up as I crouched down beside him. His beautiful green eyes were red with grief, and his face was wet with tears.

“Samiel,” I said.

I thought I knew. I thought I understood. But I didn’t.

“Understood what?” I said, confused. I’d expected him to rail at me, to shout at me, to hold me responsible for Chloe’s death.

I thought I understood what you felt when Gabriel died. I was sad and grieving, too. But it’s not like this. I didn’t know it was like having your heart and your lungs ripped out.

“Yes, that’s what it’s like,” I said, and there I was again, in that memory that looped forever, the memory that never left me even when I wanted it to.

Hot blood and cold snow and dead eyes, eyes that loved me once and were gone now.

I took a deep shuddering breath, drawing myself back to the present. I could drown there in that memory still, under the water of my grief.

“That’s what it’s like,” I repeated. “But you keep breathing. Your heart keeps beating. And you live.”

I don’t know if I want to live with this.

“You have to,” I said. “Where she has gone you cannot follow.”

But you can. You went into the land of the dead. You took Evangeline’s soul out and returned it to Lucifer. You could do that for Chloe.

I shook my head at him. “You know that what I did was unnatural, and only because I was forced to. Once something is dead, it should stay dead. That’s the natural order of things. Anyway, you didn’t see Evangeline when I brought her back.”

My many-greats-grandmother had been forced to pay a price to the universe for defying death. When she had returned to her body, both her eyes and her arm had been missing. And I honestly wasn’t sure that her brains were all there, either. Of course, it was hard to tell with Evangeline. She had been somewhat unhinged to begin with.

I don’t care what she looks like. I just want her back.

“I know,” I said, touching my chest with my hand, the place where my heart was always bruised, never completely whole. “I know. But I saw Gabriel in the land of the dead before I returned here from that place Puck sent me. And I didn’t bring him back. I didn’t bring him back because it isn’t right. He’s dead; Chloe’s dead. Our burden is to live, to go on without them.”

His eyes filled up again, and I put my arms around his shoulders. He rested his head against mine, and cried, making no sound. I cried, too, cried for Samiel and Chloe, for Stock, for Gabriel. I cried for Patrick, the best friend I’d had before I’d discovered I was the daughter of a fallen angel. I cried for all the grief I’d caused and been given, cried for the lives I’d taken and the innocent lives that had been caught in the cross fire when monsters walked the Earth.

We cried until there were no more tears, and then we sat quietly together while the sun went down outside and darkness crept through the house.

Still Daharan did not come home.

After a long while Beezle came in the kitchen and turned on the small light above the gas range.

“I hate to interrupt,” he said, and for once he looked like he actually meant it. “But we have a couple of pressing problems to deal with.”

“The shifter could come back,” I said. My voice sounded rusty.

Beezle nodded. “Since Daharan appears to be missing in action, you and Nathaniel are going to have to combine your magic and figure out a way to lay some better protection over the house.”

“Otherwise the shifter could stand out in the street and kill us all without even coming inside,” I said. “I know.”

“Also, there’s the matter of the . . .” He trailed off, looking at Samiel uncertainly.

Body,
Samiel signed.
I’ll take care of her. It should be me.

“No,” I said. “Absolutely not. I don’t want you down there at all.”

I have the right to see her.

I thought of the room, all of Chloe’s inside parts on the outside. “You don’t want to remember her that way.”

Just what did the shifter do to her? Nathaniel wouldn’t say.
Samiel stood up, helping me to my feet.

“Can’t you just trust me?” I said. “Do you have to see the horror for yourself?”

Something in my face must have convinced him, because he stared at me for a long time, then nodded.

“All right, then,” I said, relieved. “Oh, and I might have left Jack Dabrowski locked in the second storage unit.”

“Might have?” Beezle asked.

“I wasn’t sure what to do about him,” I said. “He’s only going to run straight home and get on the computer, and I don’t think it’s in the public interest for the whistle to be blown on a freaky shapeshifter right now.”

“I agree,” Beezle said. “But you can’t keep him in the storage unit forever. And you can’t have him living in the house. He’ll only pick up more intel that you won’t want disseminated on the Internet.”

“Have you been reading?” I asked. “You didn’t learn such fancy words on TV.”

“You’d be surprised what you can learn from TV,” Beezle said loftily.

We went into the living room, where Nathaniel and Jude were watching the news with grim faces. I knew both of them had heard every word that was spoken in the kitchen. That was the advantage of supernatural hearing.

“It’s already begun,” Jude said, indicating the screen.

The film showed several people handcuffed with black bags over their faces being led away by police. The voice-over said that the individuals were a family of supernatural origin and that police had been led to the offending family by a tip from their neighbors.

“It’s not just the shapeshifter we’ve got to worry about,” I said. “My neighbors know unnatural things happen in and around this house all the time. J.B. and the Agency used to make sure all the nine-one-one calls were intercepted so I wouldn’t be arrested. Whatever protection spell we use has got to deflect the human authorities as well. Otherwise we’ll be on the news with black bags over our heads.”

There was something else to consider, too. Lucifer was rather possessive of me, and his responses to different situations tended to be unpredictable. If by some strange chance the police managed to arrest me and lock me up, Lucifer might lose his mind and, say, smash the entire city of Chicago into oblivion. So it was definitely in my best interest as well as the people of the city that I not get taken.

Jude stood up. “Since night has fallen, we should dispose of Chloe’s remains while the shadows can hide us.”

You’re just going to throw her away like garbage?
Samiel signed, his face angry.

“I don’t want to,” I said. “But what else can we do? We can’t risk someone finding her in the basement, and we can’t bury her in the backyard. Freshly turned soil is kind of a giveaway that you’ve been up to no good.”

“It would be safest to burn her,” Nathaniel said. “That way nothing will remain to direct the authorities to us.”

“It will be like cremation,” I said to Samiel. I could hear the pleading tone in my voice even if he could not. “You’ll be able to keep her ashes.”

“Of course, a giant conflagration in the yard might attract attention,” Beezle said.

“There are two fireplaces in this building,” Nathaniel said. “There is no reason to bring her outside.”

I sat down abruptly on the couch, my stomach churning. “This is sick. This is sick and horrible. Why are we standing here talking about burning Chloe like she’s just a logistical problem we need to work around? What is the matter with us?”

I expected Samiel to have another angry outburst, but he surprised me again by sitting beside me and taking my hand.
It’s okay. I understand. I do. Something horrible has happened, and we’re not in a position to behave normally about it. You can’t call the police; you can’t have a funeral. Nathaniel’s right. Burning is the best way. It’s only her body, anyway, right? Her soul has gone through the Door.

My fists clenched involuntarily as I was seized by a flash of panic. What if her soul hadn’t gone through the Door? What if her death was so strange and unnatural that her ghost would stay and haunt me forever? For the second time that day, I wished J.B. were still at the Agency. He would be able to check the paperwork and verify that she had been taken by an Agent. I didn’t even want to consider what my former colleagues might think of one of their own being brutally murdered in my basement. And that led to another panicked thought. What if word spread around the Agency about what happened to Chloe, and I got blamed? What if a bunch of Agents were on their way here in the form of an angry lynch mob?

Stay calm, stay focused. Don’t borrow trouble,
I thought. If a mob of angry Agents was on their way, there wasn’t much I could do about it, at least until they got here.

“I don’t want her burned up here,” I said. “I know it’s selfish. But let’s do it in the downstairs apartment.”

“Daharan’s a dragon. He won’t care,” Beezle said.

“Honestly, I don’t care if he cares,” I said. “I just don’t want to look at my fireplace every night from now until forever and remember that someone I liked and respected met her final end there. Daharan isn’t going to be here for the rest of his life. I am.”

“Let us take care of this now,” Nathaniel said. “Then we can focus on the protection spell.”

Nathaniel started toward the back stairs and I followed, indicating Jude, Samiel and Beezle should stay behind. When we reached the back door Nathaniel turned to me.

“I do not think this is a task for you,” he said.

“Believe me, I’m not volunteering to scoop up body parts,” I said. “Something Samiel said made me wonder if Chloe’s soul might be hanging around, and I want to check.”

He nodded. “I did not consider that. You are correct. It would not do if her ghost were lurking about your home. At any rate, it will not be necessary to physically clean the room. I believe I will be able to do it without touching anything. I will use nightfire to destroy the body so the burning will be quick. I will be able to collect the ashes for Samiel.”

“Then why don’t you want me there?” I said as we went down to the basement.

“Do you really need to see her again?” Nathaniel said. “Does not the argument you made to Samiel apply to you as well? Do you need to wallow in the pain in order to feel it fully?”

“No,” I said, suddenly angry and not knowing why. “But you don’t need to treat me like I’m some helpless little girl. I’ve faced plenty on my own without you to protect me.”

He turned to me suddenly. Because I stood a couple of steps higher than him, our faces were at the same level for a change instead of his looming above me as normal. He was angry, too, and I could tell he’d been holding it in for a while.

“But you will not let me protect you,” he said, his voice low and furious. “You must always push me to one side, determined to face the monster on your own, to prove that you do not need a shield. You will not let me do as I should do, as a man is supposed to do. You will not let me show that I love you.”

“It’s got nothing to do with love,” I said. “I’m not going to let someone else take punishment that should be mine. Why should you suffer when it’s my responsibility?”

“It is about love,” Nathaniel said, the anger draining away from him suddenly. “It is about your love for Gabriel, and his for you. He stood in front of you when Azazel was there with his sword, and you have never forgiven yourself for that. You have never accepted that he died in your place.”

All the emotions that had been stirred up by the events of the day were tangled inside me—love, grief, anger, fear, guilt. I didn’t know what to do with all of this emotion. I didn’t have anywhere to put it, and I was afraid. I was afraid that if I loved Nathaniel, or if I let him protect me as he wanted, the worst would happen again.

“Do you want me to be left like that again?” I said. “Will you feel that you’ve done your duty if I’m left standing over your body as I was with him?”

“Will you feel that you have done your duty if I’m left that way instead?” he said. “Do you think I could live with the loss if I thought I could save you?”

“No,” I said, my voice small.

He put his arms around me. I resisted for a moment, then relaxed. There was comfort here, and I needed to learn to accept it.

“You are not being weak if you allow me to share the burden with you,” he said.

“I know,” I said. And I did know, in my head. But my heart was another matter entirely.

It was stupid of me to fight over every little thing. Didn’t I have enough conflict in my life without picking a fight with my friends and allies? But I was afraid of weakness, afraid of exactly what Nathaniel had said. Death had been the first companion of my life, and Death never seemed to leave me.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

He didn’t respond, and I pulled away from his shoulder to look at his expression.

His face was frozen, a mask of pain, and blood was seeping from his mouth and nose.

“Nathaniel!” I screamed as his body started to crumple. I grabbed him as he went limp in my arms, but his weight was too much for me when I was already off balance from pregnancy. He tumbled away to the first-floor landing.