Black Lament
Page 4

Do you really think I could work there? Samiel looked doubtful.
“Sure. I’ll talk to J.B. about it.” As I said this, it occurred to me that I hadn’t picked up any souls for a couple of days, and I wondered if I had been neglecting my sacred duty while wandering around in a depressed fog.
“Before you start panicking,” Beezle said, reading my thoughts, “you should know that J.B. called a few days ago and said he was reassigning all of your pickups for the next week.”
“Do you think you could actually deliver my messages in a timely manner?” I said. “Or, better yet, don’t pick up the phone at all and let the answering machine fulfill the purpose for which it was created.”
“What?” Beezle said. “You’re getting the message now.”
“That’s not the point,” I began, and trailed off. The snake tattoo on my right palm tingled. I stood up. I’d learned not to ignore Lucifer’s mark.
What’s wrong? Samiel signed.
“Danger approaching. Stay in the house,” I said to Beezle.
I yanked on my boots, grabbed my sword and pounded downstairs in just my jeans and sweater. Samiel followed.
I threw open the door at the bottom of the stairs. Through the glass of the outer door I saw Nathaniel silhouetted in the light of the streetlamp. I stepped out on the porch beside him, Lucifer’s sword in my right hand.
He appeared alert and wary. Samiel stood on my other side, his hands fisted.
“There’s something wrong,” I said.
“I sense it as well,” Nathaniel replied.
There was no movement on the street. I wasn’t sure of the time since the winter dark came so early, but it seemed like most people were inside and buttoned up for the night. That was good. It diminished the possibility of collateral damage.
I smelled woodsmoke and the faint traces of car exhaust. The cold air bit into my skin. My hand grasped the sword tighter.
It suddenly seemed as if the night had gone blacker, like the stars were extinguished. I gasped for breath through air that felt thick and heavy as tar. The night was smothering me, suffocating me. All around us the lights in my neighbors’ houses winked out, as if the normal humans felt the presence of this creeping darkness and wanted to avoid drawing its attention.
I staggered, struggling for breath, and Nathaniel caught my shoulders, holding me upright.
“Gods above and below,” he whispered, and in his voice was a mixture of awe and fear. “It’s a Grimm.”
“A what?” I said, trying to find air in the omnipresent blackness. I shrugged out of his hold, standing as tall as I could with the air pressing down on me.
“A creature of Faerie. No one has seen a Grimm for hundreds of years. I thought they were legends.”
Faerie? I thought, and then the tentacle came flying out of the cloak of darkness. It wrapped around Samiel’s ankle. He grunted as he fell to the ground, clawing at the porch. The creature yanked hard at its prey as I cried, “Samiel!”
I dropped the sword and dove for his hands. The tips of his fingers brushed mine. I saw his panicked face, and then he disappeared into the night.
“No!” I cried.
Nathaniel pulled me roughly to my feet, pressing the sword in my hand.
“Do not let go of your weapon,” he hissed. “Do you want to live?”
“Samiel,” I said. I couldn’t lose Samiel, too.
“Focus,” Nathaniel said. “If you want Samiel back, you must defeat this creature.”
If Samiel’s still alive, I thought. He could be dead already.
The night seemed to be watching us, taking our measure. Nathaniel was right. I couldn’t afford to fall apart now. Nathaniel murmured something beside me, and a glowing ball of orange flame appeared. He threw it into the darkness, where it was swallowed whole. Nothing was illuminated by the course of the flame. The creature did not seem to have been harmed in any way. Nathaniel’s spell had been smothered by the dark.
I held the sword in front of me, my heart thundering. The tension stretched out unbearably as the night closed in around us. Nothing happened. My palms were slippery on the hilt of the sword, and cold sweat trickled in the small of my back.
I was afraid. No, I wasn’t afraid. I was terrified. It seemed like all my childhood fears of the dark, fears I had long forgotten, returned to me in a paralyzing rush.
I remembered lying in my bed, small and afraid, desperately needing to use the bathroom but being unable to move, unable to throw off the covers and walk down the hall because once I left the safety of my bed the Bad Man would be able to get me, and he waited just outside my door.
The Bad Man was a composite of horror-movie killers and urban legend maniacs whose escapades I’d overheard from other students at school. His face was burned. He walked with a limp. His left hand had been replaced by a hook that he used to catch you, snag you so that he could slice open your belly with the knife he held in his right hand.
I was always sure he waited for me, that I could hear the harsh anticipation in his breath, the thump-drag of his limping walk that preceded his arrival. I would lie in the darkness, eyes wide-open, weeping in silent terror, too scared to run to the bathroom because if I went into that hallway, I would die.
“Madeline,” Nathaniel whispered, and he put his hand on my shoulder.
I swung the sword at him without thinking, locked in the memory I’d long since buried. Only his preternatural speed kept him from losing his head, but I managed to nick him just below his left ear. I stared, panting with terror, as the blood welled and dripped onto the porch.
I noticed then that it was not completely dark, that I could see Nathaniel. I could see the blood that ran over his neck. It was as if he were lit faintly from within, and he was surrounded by a gently glowing halo of light.
I looked at my own hand. No halo, but I could barely make out the shape of my fingers in the light he cast. Must be a pureblood-angel thing. My own lineage was far too muddied by humans for me to have a halo.
“Madeline,” he repeated, stepping close to me. I automatically took a half step backward, the way I always did when he crowded into my space.
“The Grimm is a creature that thrives on fear,” he said in a low and urgent voice. “You must not give it any fuel. The more terrified you become, the more you open yourself to its power.”
I realized that while I was contemplating the mysteries of Nathaniel’s internal light, the pressing, suffocating fear had receded. Now that I was conscious of it again, it roared back.
My hands trembled. My heart pounded. I struggled through the fear that choked me.
“Can we fight it?” I asked Nathaniel.
“I do not know if we can fight it in the traditional sense.” His face was white and strained. I wondered briefly what Nathaniel feared, what bogeyman stalked his sleep.
“It took Samiel. I saw its arm.”
“An arm that may not exist anymore. The Grimm is nebulous, formless. It is fear that gives it shape.”
“Are you telling me that a marshmallow man is going to come stomping down the street?”
Nathaniel frowned at me. “I do not understand.”
“Of course you don’t.”
Again it seemed that while we spoke, the fear had rolled back. I took a firmer grip on my sword and went down the steps.
“Madeline, where are you going?” Nathaniel hissed.
“Nothing’s going to happen if we stand on the porch wringing our hands,” I said.
I could feel the dark blanketing me, trying to squeeze. I raised the sword in front of me with two hands and called out.
“I am not afraid of you. Give Samiel back and return to wherever you came from.”
Sweat dripped into my eyes and I swiped at it with my sleeve. It seemed the blackness all around became more complete, more smothering.
“I am not afraid of you,” I repeated, and I didn’t know if I was trying to convince the monster or myself.
LIAR.
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. It seemed like it was inside my ears, inside my blood and brain, permeating to the very heart of me, the small, secret place where my primal self was hidden.
And then I heard it.
Thump-drag. Thump-drag.
He loomed out of the dark, the Bad Man of my nightmares. I was paralyzed for a moment, and he slashed at me with his butcher’s blade. I stumbled backward at the last moment, the tip of the knife just catching the collar of my sweater, skimming over flesh and drawing blood.
“Madeline!” Nathaniel cried. I heard him coming down the steps, coming to help me.
NO, said the darkness.
A tentacle flew out of the shadows again and seized Nathaniel. I heard his cry of rage, but I couldn’t focus on him. I could see only the Bad Man coming for me. He swung out his hook, trying to snag me with one hand while slashing with the other. His burned face was set in a contorted grimace of delight, his small blue eyes cruel under the hood of ruined flesh.
I swiped at his legs with the sword but he leapt aside with surprising agility for a man with a limp. I stumbled backward, caught my heel on the edge of the steps and fell to the ground. My sword flew from my hand.
He was on me in an instant, his knife coming for my throat. I caught his wrists as he fell on top of me, the stink of his blood-scented breath making me gag. He was strong, much stronger than an ordinary human, but so was I. The angelic blood that ran inside me made me just a little stronger, a littler faster. I held him off me, though I was blinded by tears, certain the fate I had always feared as a child had come for me.
For a second, for just the tiniest moment, I thought, If he kills me, I can be with Gabriel. At that thought, the child that was so small inside of me that it was barely a speck of light beat its little wings in distress.
And suddenly my fear was gone. It wasn’t bravado for the Grimm, but the true disappearance of terror.
“No,” I said, and fire ignited in my blood.
The place where I held the Bad Man’s wrists smoked. His eyes widened, uncertain. Then he screamed in pain as I pushed magic through my hands and into his skin.