Christina Henry - Black Lament

“And so these feelings encompass your feelings toward me, as well,” he said. “Because I have long been associated with Azazel. Because I participated in acts which you find repugnant.”

“Well, yes,” I said, feeling flustered. “But you’ve done some good things, too.”

“But not enough to overcome my past,” Nathaniel said.

“This really isn’t the time to discuss this,” I said. I wanted to stay focused on the mission, not get distracted by the confusing feelings I had about Nathaniel.

“Very well,” he said, and fell silent.

The stairs seemed to go on forever. Finally, we reached the bottom. A stone passage stretched away from us, set at intervals with candles encased in glass. The air was dry and smelled like rotten meat.

“Another tunnel,” Beezle observed.

“Another tunnel.” I sighed. “Stolen from a Vincent Price movie, no less.”

It was wide enough that Samiel, Nathaniel and I could walk comfortably abreast. Jude trotted ahead, his nose to the ground. He seemed to be working harder now to follow Chloe’s scent. The rotten-meat smell was getting stronger.

The passage came to a T-junction, and we all looked expectantly at Jude. He went down each side of the junction a little ways, circling and coming back over the same ground a few times. He looked up at me and whined.

“You can’t tell which way she’s gone?” I asked.

He barked in reply.

I looked down each passage. Nothing seemed to distinguish these stone tunnels from the one we’d just come through.

“Maybe we should…” I began.

Don’t you dare say that we should split up, Samiel said.

“It would be more efficient,” I pointed out.

“We are not dividing the group,” Nathaniel said.

I heaved a sigh. They were both right. Dividing our forces was not a good idea. I’d seen enough horror movies to know that.

“What do you think?” I asked Beezle, who was peering down each passage with interest.

He clapped his claws over his eyes and pointed with his other hand. “Eenie-meenie-minie-moe. That way.”

He pointed right.

Nathaniel raised an eyebrow at me.

“We don’t have anything better to go on,” I said. “Maybe Jude will pick up something as we go farther along.”

After several moments the rotting smell intensified to the point where my eyes were watering. I pulled the neck of my sweater over my mouth and nose. Beezle hid inside my coat with his claws over his mouth, breathing shallowly. Nathaniel coughed every few minutes in a way that told me he was trying to keep from heaving.

Jude, especially, looked miserable. I think the stench was starting to dull his sense of smell.

We all suspected what was causing the smell, but nobody wanted to say it out loud.

The passage came to an abrupt end at a wooden door. There was no lock, key or doorknob, and no window to see what was behind it.

I touched my hand to the door, and it swung open. A blast of stinking air hit me in the face, and I turned away, gagging.

I wished I’d never seen what was behind the door.

The room was long and narrow, and there was another doorway at the far end. Bodies were everywhere in between, tossed like dirty laundry. Most of the bodies were not intact. There were arms and legs, fingers and ears, random bits that used to be people. No matter where I looked I saw exposed bone and ragged flesh.

“Azazel’s been feeding the nephilim,” Beezle said quietly.

“There’s no point in going in,” I said, reaching to close the door.

Jude sniffed the ground outside the door and barked, pointing his nose inside the room.

“She’s in there?” I asked in dread. I did not want to search through the piles of corpses looking for Chloe.

Jude ran into the room and stopped at the far door. He barked again and disappeared through the doorway.

“I thought we didn’t want to divide our forces,” I mumbled as we jogged after him.

The next room was about the same size and shape as the previous one, but it was empty. There were copper-red stains on the stone floor.

Jude had already gone ahead to the next room. I heard him bark, and the sound of a sword clashing against stone.

I ran ahead and through the doorway, my own sword drawn. I needn’t have worried. Jude had already killed the soldier there and left him on the ground. The wolf turned around, his face covered in blood, his tongue hanging out in a macabre doggy grin.

This room was much like the others, except that each side was stacked floor-to-ceiling with cages. And inside the cages were the missing Agents. They all appeared to be sleeping.

Samiel was already running to Chloe, whose vivid purple hair practically glowed in the gloom. He tore the cage door off its hinges and lifted her out. A second later I was at his side, feeling for her pulse.

Her heart was still beating. On her neck were two puncture wounds. I opened her mouth with my fingers to make sure that she hadn’t been turned, and was relieved to see ordinary human canines.

Jude had transformed back into a human and was opening the other cages. Nathaniel lifted the sleeping Agents out and placed them on the floor while I checked to see if they all still lived. I also checked to see if they were all still human.

Two of them had the sharp, pointy canines of a vampire.

“Better take care of them now,” Beezle said.

“How can I do that?” I said. “They’re no threat to me.”

“They were turned by vampires working with Azazel,” Beezle said. “If you leave them, it will be two more soldiers you’ll have to kill later.”

I knew that what Beezle was saying was right, but it didn’t make it any easier. These were my colleagues, people I’d worked with at the Agency. They had been kidnapped, likely tortured, and turned against their will.

Killing them didn’t seem like the preventive medicine that Beezle made it out to be. It seemed like murder.

“I’ll do it,” Nathaniel said, holding his hand out for my sword. His eyes were very grave.

I shook my head. “No. I should do it.”

As I brought the sword down to their necks one by one, I wondered whether their deaths had been foreseen, and if so, where were their Agents?

I saw their souls emerge, but no Agent appeared to take them to the Door. They both looked at me expectantly, one man and one woman, both about my age. I thought the man’s name was James and that his cubicle was on my floor, but I wasn’t certain.

“I can take you to the Door,” I said, “but I have some things to do first.”

“Whoa, Madeline Black is here for us?” James asked. He seemed impressed for a moment; then he looked down at my right hand. “Wait—you killed us?”

I’d forgotten I was holding the bloody sword. “You were turning into vampires.”

“And you killed us even though we’d done you no harm?” the woman said. “No wonder you have such a bad reputation.”

“Look,” I said. “I’m sorry I killed you, but it was pretty likely you would have died in this war Azazel is about to wage. If you’ll come with us, I’ll take you to the Door once we get the other Agents out of here safely.”

“I don’t want to go with you,” the woman said. “I’m an Agent. I can take my own self to the door.”

“Yeah, I think I can handle it,” James said.

They both broke free of their ectoplasmic cords without my assistance, and floated upward through the ceiling.

“Well, that’s just great,” I said, kicking James’ body. “I’m sure the Agency is going to harass me for allowing their souls to escape.”

“I thought we’d agreed that the Agency was going to harass you no matter what you do,” Beezle said. “The bigger problem is this—how are we going to get fourteen sleeping Agents out of here?”