Black Heart

8

“THE LAND OF THE DEAD,” I SAID. “OF COURSE IT DOES. Because I’m already in trouble with the Agency and I need to be in even more hot water.”

Daharan frowned. “Why does Lucifer not clear your way with the Agency? Particularly since you collected Evangeline at his behest.”

“You know about that?” I asked.

“I know much more than you think I do. Either of you,” Daharan said, with a pointed look at his brother. Puck shifted uncomfortably in the sand.

“Well, anyway,” I said. “Lucifer likes to see me get out of my own jams. That’s why he wouldn’t do anything about the Retrievers coming after me. And it wouldn’t matter, anyway. They’ve got it in for me—Sokolov and Bryson and probably some faceless members of the board. Bryson’s got a personal problem with me because I, um, might have physically harmed him at one point or another.”

Daharan raised an eyebrow at me.

I wasn’t going to go into detail about how I’d let Nathaniel torture Bryson. I hurried on. “But mostly they don’t like that I managed to squeeze out of my eternal contract with them. Nobody at the Agency ever thought it would be possible.”

“Yes, they believe you could incite rebellion amongst the Agents, cause them to give up their duty,” Daharan said. “It is foolish. None of the other Agents has your powers or your bloodlines. Were you not one of us, you would have been entirely unable to throw off the mantle of death.”

“I’m not sure it will help my case if they know that,” I said. “They’re already afraid of me as it is. And a lot of bad stuff has happened to Agents because of me.”

Ramuell and Antares breaking into the Agency with a horde of demons, killing indiscriminately. Agents being taken and used for Azazel’s experiments. Yes, the Agency had a lot of grief it could lay at my door, even if most of it was indirect.

It wasn’t really my fault that my enemies used innocents in their quest to get to me. But I carried the burden of those deaths anyway.

My stomach grumbled loudly, breaking the tension and the silence. I grinned in an embarrassed way. “Sorry. Can’t remember the last time I ate.”

To my surprise, Daharan turned to Puck with an angry look. “Did you not think to feed the girl before you put her through her paces? She is with child. She needs nourishment.”

He muttered something to himself, and a picnic blanket appeared on the sand. And on the picnic blanket there were . . .

“Pancakes!” I said. I’m not ashamed to admit that I dove for that plate like Beezle going for the popcorn bowl.

There was a whole spread, with orange juice and a bowl of brightly colored, cut-up fruit, and every kind of pancake topping I liked—butter and syrup and fruit jams. There was even bacon, and it smelled so heavenly that I almost fainted in ecstasy.

“Slowly,” Daharan said. “You will make yourself sick.”

I nodded, and carefully cut up one pancake on my plate after drowning it in butter and syrup. I ate slowly, letting my shriveled stomach adjust to the idea of food again.

While I shoveled food in my mouth—in a careful, measured way, of course—Daharan indicated to Puck that he should follow him. The two of them wandered down the beach.

I was definitely curious about what they were discussing, but I was probably better off not knowing. The less I knew of the plans of Lucifer’s brothers, the better.

I was sure I could trust Daharan, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t also harboring a secret plan for world domination, or some desire to see one or more of his brothers destroyed. I didn’t want any part of that. I sincerely hoped that Daharan wouldn’t help me get to the portal and then ask for some unnamed favor later.

It’s pretty likely, though, isn’t it? I thought. I’d never had dealings with any supernatural creature that didn’t want something in return.

Down the beach, Puck turned to Daharan, his face angry. He was gesturing wildly, obviously furious. Daharan faced him with crossed arms, and he seemed unmoved by Puck’s performance.

I ate until I couldn’t eat anymore, and the little guy inside my belly beat his wings happily. Now that I was full, I felt sleepy again. It seemed like all I’d done in the last couple of days was deal with insanely stressful situations and then pass out as soon as they were over. But I could feel my eyes closing, my mind drifting.

I was warm and I was safe, and so was my child. I had no fear.

When I woke it was night, and I was no longer on the beach. Daharan cradled me in a kind of sling that hung from his front claws. The ocean rolled away beneath us, and the wind blew in my hair. It should have been uncomfortable, but the heat emanating from Daharan’s body kept me warm, and I wasn’t worried that he would drop me. I drifted off again.

The next time I opened my eyes the sun was blazing, and the ocean was gone. Below us were the spiky peaks of mountains. I felt wide-awake and refreshed for the first time in days. I felt like I could take on anything—the Retrievers, the Agency, Evangeline, even Alerian. Well, maybe not Alerian. But I felt a lot better than I had for a while.

I reached up and put my hand on Daharan’s claw so that he would know I was awake. He snorted in response, and kept flying. We were close to the portal now. I wondered how long I’d been asleep, and how long we’d been flying.

It is a much different experience to be carried by a flying dragon than to fly yourself. The dragon moves a lot faster, for one. I’d never been in an airplane—I’d never had any need to be in one—but I imagine that dragon flight is not unlike jet flight. The ground was much farther away than it would have been if I had been flying myself, and it seemed like we were passing slowly over it, though I knew we were covering dozens of miles every minute.

I relaxed in the sling that Daharan had made for me, and made a concerted effort not to worry about what consequences might be in store for me if I passed through the land of the dead again. There honestly wasn’t much worse that the Agency could do to me that they hadn’t already done, but my actions would probably inflame Sokolov and his gang further.

On the other hand, I couldn’t control what the Agency decided to do. Or Lucifer and Evangeline. Or Alerian or Daharan or Puck. I could only respond to what they chose to do.

I realized that had become a way of life for me. At some point I had ceased taking the initiative. I’d become a person who responded to what happened instead of making things happen. But could I do any different? I wasn’t going to sit back and let my family members run roughshod over innocent people.

Daharan pointed his nose down, releasing flame as he descended. The mountains had morphed into smaller foothills, and the portal was near us. We dropped slowly, but I was still forced to crack my jaw to make my ears pop.

Daharan landed softly in the grass in front of the portal. Most portals exerted a strong, vacuumlike pull on their immediate vicinity. Some of them created temporary cyclones so strong that they sucked in small objects from several feet away. This portal wasn’t like that. It hung in space like a mirror, quiet and still. It blended in to the landscape in such a way that you would not know it was there if you weren’t looking for it.

Unlike most of the other portals I’d seen, the world on the other side was not obscured by mist. I could see the scorched earth of the land of the dead, the place that I’d taken Evangeline from.

Daharan transformed into construction-worker-guy next to me. I turned to him.

“Thanks,” I said simply. “Thanks for feeding me, and bringing me here. If you hadn’t, I probably would have had to ask for Puck’s help, and he would have demanded another favor in return.”

“Madeline,” Daharan said. His face was very serious. That seemed to be his default emotion. I bet there wasn’t a lot of levity when Daharan was around. “Be wary of any deals you make with Puck. He is as changeable as the air.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “But sometimes I don’t have a choice.”

“There is always a choice,” Daharan said.

“Not always,” I said, thinking of the first time I’d indebted myself to Puck. He’d given me a jewel to escape Titania and Oberon’s court, and hadn’t bothered to mention that I would owe him a boon in return. Apparently you didn’t have to actually verbally agree to anything in order to make a contract with Puck.

Daharan gave me a brooding look. I sensed that there was something else he wanted to say to me, that there was something Puck had done that upset him. But he just gave a small sigh and said, “Shall we go?”

I looked at him in surprise. “Wait—you’re going to go with me?”

“Of course,” Daharan said. “I would not be able to leave this world otherwise. And I will not leave you to the tender mercies of the Retrievers as my brother would.”

I blinked away the tears that sprang up. “Thank you,” I said.

“He should do this himself,” Daharan said, and the flames in his eyes blazed higher for a moment.

“We both know that Lucifer only does what Lucifer wants to do,” I said.

“He has always been like that,” Daharan muttered. “From the cradle.”

I had a very strange vision of the four brothers as children. It looked a lot like a chibi-anime cartoon in my head, all soft edges and big eyes. Alerian was a tiny cute squid in a baby pool. Puck a troublesome toddler with chocolate on his face and a stash of cookies behind the couch. Daharan was a teensy dragon blowing puffs of smoke. And Lucifer rose up on little wings before falling to the ground, unable to stay aloft.

I shook my head. My brain seemed to enjoy delivering me these non sequiturs from time to time. A thought occurred to me.

“Who are your parents?” I said. I’d always assumed the four brothers had sprung fully formed from the dust of the universe or whatever. “If you were children, you had parents.”

Daharan shook his head. “This is not for you to know.”

“Why not?” I said. “They’re related to me, too.”

“Our parents are very ancient beings, and they have slept for millennia,” Daharan said. “To speak of them would be to wake them, to draw their attention.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” I said. “Maybe Lucifer and Puck would calm down if Mommy and Daddy put them in a time-out.”

“They would not put them in a ‘time-out,’” Daharan said. “When we were children, if Lucifer and Puck fought over a toy, my parents would simply break the toy.”

“Oh,” I said, getting the picture. “So if they thought that Lucifer and Puck were fighting for, say, dominion over the Earth . . .”

“They would wipe out the Earth and everything on it,” Daharan said.

“Okay, let’s not wake up Great-Grandpa and -Grandma,” I said.

Daharan gave me a very small, very brief smile. “Yes, let’s not.”

In silent agreement we both turned toward the portal.

“I will go first,” Daharan said.

A cold, unreasoning fear gripped my heart. Gabriel had always wanted to go first, and that was why Azazel’s sword had killed him instead of me.

“Do not worry,” Daharan said. “It would take a great deal to kill me.”

“Of course,” I said, and watched Daharan step into the portal. A moment later, I followed.