Christina Henry - Black City

“Remember what I said.”

“You—”

“Remember what I said,” I repeated.

Maybe I was going a little dark side.

“Now, get walking,” I said, and pointed west, toward the horizon.

Evangeline’s lips parted. “Walk?”

I nodded. “You don’t think we can just fly out of here, do you? We’ve got to earn it. I’m taking a soul from the other side of the Door.”

“Surely you have the ability to…”

“Do you want to stay? Because that will make my life a lot less complicated, and I’m very big on anything that will make my life easier right now,” I said.

“I cannot believe that you expect me to pay the price for our return,” she muttered.

“I’m not paying it,” I said. “You want to live again, you pony up. I’m just the delivery girl.”

It was helpful to consider myself that way, to think that I was simply doing the same duty I had always done as an Agent, except in reverse. It was easier than thinking about the fact that I was doing something that undid the order of the universe just so Lucifer could exert his will.

When I thought about it that way, my bitterness was like chalk in my mouth. Of course I’d never had a real option to leave Evangeline behind, no matter what I’d said. If I’d come home without her, Lucifer would have simply ordered me back as Hound, and I would have been unable to resist. I’d thought it would be better to do it of my own free will, but it was almost worse. I couldn’t fall back on the excuse that I’d been nothing but a puppet for Lucifer.

Evangeline reluctantly trudged forward. She looked like a pouty child who was told that she couldn’t have a lollipop.

There was something of the child about Evangeline still, I mused. She had been very young when she’d fallen in love with Lucifer, and she had destroyed her whole village and anyone who crossed her in order to get to him. She had been taken from Lucifer by a rival faction of fallen angels, and then been rescued by Michael and hidden away.

In a sense she had never really grown up. And I knew from experience that when Evangeline wanted something, she would lay waste to anything in her path to get it. When she’d wanted her vengeance on Ariell, the angel who had stolen her from Lucifer, she had possessed me. She’d lost her mind completely when I’d refused to let her work her will through my body, and then she’d been killed by Ramuell and ended up here.

I was pretty sure that she was right on the edge of insanity. I was also sure that whatever plans Lucifer had for the future did not include having a mad queen on the throne beside him.

He wanted the baby. Just as he wanted my baby.

My son gave a little flutter underneath my belly button. I wished I could be as other mothers were, the ones who lay on their sofas and dreamed of their child’s face, their child’s future. When I looked into my child’s future I saw a life of turmoil and pain.

And love, a little voice whispered from the back of my head, and it sounded a lot like Beezle.

Yes, I would love this baby. I already did, with a fury and a power I had not expected. I would do anything for my son.

And so would Evangeline. I glanced at her as she padded along in the sand in bare feet, her hair waving about in wild Medusa springs. She was nuts. She would kill me in an instant if she thought she could get away with it, because it was pretty clear that she was jealous of my standing with Lucifer. I’d like to tell her she was welcome to him if she would just keep him away from me, but I didn’t think she would believe me.

Still, she was a mother, too. And that made me feel a little sorry for her. Her first two children had been taken by duty and Death, made to serve as soul collectors in Lucifer’s stead.

I don’t know whether I could bear it if my child were taken from me. Her instability was easier to understand in that light.

We walked on, two mothers-to-be, without food or water or shade or shelter. The horizon looked farther away with every step.

“How much more?” she asked through parched lips.

“We’ll know,” I said. I had long since abandoned my favorite sweater and rolled my shirtsleeves to my shoulders. I was getting a sunburn.

Something shimmered in front of us. I stopped, squinted at the thing that must be an illusion.

“Do you see that?” I asked.

Evangeline shaded her eyes. “Something silver? Water?”

“Something silver,” I breathed. “Not water. A portal.”

We walked faster. I stumbled over my own feet in the sand. Evangeline went ahead of me, her gown flowing behind her. Her crazy cackle trailed in the wind as she laughed and laughed harder the closer she got to the portal.

I ran, trying to catch up with her, but I was wearing heavy boots and lugging a sword that kept banging around. I would have flown, but ever since I’d landed I’d felt the air pressing on me in a way that told me flying would be impossible here.

I think that she thought she would be able to dive through the portal and close it on the other side, leaving me there. She found out soon enough that wouldn’t happen.

She launched herself at the portal and bounced off it as if it were a brick wall. She staggered backward, her hands thrown wide.

“What is this?” she screeched. “Why have I crossed this desert if not to escape?”

“Chill,” I said, coming up behind her, panting. “Keep the lid on the crazy for a second, will you?”

“I swear by all the gods, granddaughter, if you have made me suffer for no reason…”

“You’ll what?” I said. “Talk me to death? You have no power, Evangeline. Here you are nothing more than a spirit, and you cannot pass through that portal without me. And without paying the price.”

She narrowed her eyes. “I thought I just paid the price.”

“You thought a walk through the desert was the price?” I asked. “No way. You’re asking to be restored to the living. The only way you pay is in blood.”

Evangeline covered her belly protectively. “You will not take my child from me.”

“I am not taking anything,” I said impatiently, although it was a possibility I had already considered. The universe might let Evangeline through that portal—if she gave her baby’s life in return. “It’s not up to me.”

I held out my hand to her. She gazed at it fearfully, as if I were a snake about to strike.

“If you want to return, you have to come with me. And you have to agree to the price that is asked of you,” I said. “Otherwise, you stay.”

After a long pause, she took my hand. Her fingers were cold, and I was seized by the sudden impulse to comfort her.

Then I remembered that she had laughed like a maniac when Ramuell had torn my heart out, and the impulse passed.

We approached the portal, which looked like a long silver mirror hanging without wall or wire above the sand. I stretched my other hand toward it, and I passed through. Evangeline flowed in behind me.

Unlike every other portal I’d experienced, this one did not immediately suck us into a vacuum and send us hurtling through space and time. Instead we were floating in a kind of misty netherworld, surrounded by streams of white smoke.

One of the puffs of smoke curled into a face and gazed at me with empty eyes. I realized that what I thought was smoke were ghosts, the ghosts of all those who had tried to pass through here and been unable or unwilling to pay the price.

The ghosts wound around us. They seemed fairly harmless to me, like kittens. But Evangeline started to struggle, to try to shake them off her.

“Quit it,” I said. “If you keep that up, I’ll lose you.”

“Make them leave,” she said, her voice trembling. “They want my baby.”