Black City (A BLACK WINGS NOVEL) Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  BLACK HOWL

  “Maddy is a strong female heroine…The ending of Black Howl will probably leave you shocked…and dying for the next.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “A roller coaster of emotions…An incredible read from start to finish that only further cemented my love for this series, and I highly recommend it.”

  —A Book Obsession

  “This series reminds me of the Harry Dresden series by Jim Butcher or Rachel in the Hollows series by Kim Harrison…It has enough action, suspense and sarcasm to keep my attention. I look forward to seeing where Christina Henry takes us next.”

  —Dark Faerie Tales

  “Action packed. You are sucked in from page one and set on a roller-coaster ride of action till the end.”

  —Paranormal Haven

  BLACK NIGHT

  “A riveting adventure of a novel…Black Night has within its pages the most utterly believable and wonderful depiction I’ve ever seen of a character forced to face her darkest fears.”

  —Errant Dreams Reviews

  “Madeline Black is back and super badass in her second installment…If you’re looking for a brilliant urban fantasy with page-turning action, witty dialogue and fun characters—this is your book.”

  —Rex Robot Reviews

  “The style of this book is just like the first book in the series—playful and light, yet also adventurous and dark…The bottom line is that if you enjoy adventure stories, you will enjoy this book, especially if you’re a nonstop action junky.”

  —SFRevu

  BLACK WINGS

  “A fun, fast ride through the gritty streets of Chicago, Black Wings has it all: a gutsy heroine just coming into her power, badass bad guys, a sexy supernatural love interest and a scrappy gargoyle sidekick. Highly recommended.”

  —Nancy Holzner, author of Darklands

  “An entertaining urban fantasy starring an intriguing heroine…The soul-eater-serial-killer mystery adds to an engaging Chicago joyride as courageous Madeline fears this unknown adversary but goes after the lethal beast.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “Fast action, plenty of demons and a hint of mystery surrounding the afterlife make for an entertaining urban fantasy populated by an assortment of interesting characters.”

  —Monsters and Critics

  “Henry shows that she is up to the challenge of debuting in a crowded genre. The extensive background of her imaginative world is well integrated with the action-packed plot, and the satisfying conclusion leaves the reader primed for the next installment.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Readers will enjoy a fast-paced adventure with an interesting cast, especially Beezle, the gargoyle, and be ready and waiting for a future still yet unwritten. Pick up your copy of Black Wings today, and stay tuned for Black Night.”

  —Romance Reviews Today

  “A fast-paced first novel…Black Wings is a lot of fun.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “Henry does an excellent job of unveiling the first layers of her unique world and its fascinating inhabitants. There’s plenty of kick-butt action and intriguing twists to ensure that this story grabs you from the very first page. One to watch!”

  —RT Book Reviews (4 stars)

  “The story was a nonstop action blast full of smart-alecky gargoyle guardians, devilishly handsome (and enigmatic) love interests, arrogant demons, wicked witches and more jaw-dropping revelations than a Jerry Springer show. I barely had time to catch my breath between chapters.”

  —All Things Urban Fantasy

  “Fast-paced, action-packed and hard-core—breathing new life into the vast genre of urban fantasy…Black Wings is intense, dark and full of surprises.”

  —Rex Robot Reviews

  “I read Black Wings in one day, and I loved spending that time with Madeline (and Beezle). I recommend Christina Henry to readers who enjoy the dark humor of Ilona Andrews’s Kate Daniels series and the demon politics of Stacia Kane’s Megan Chase series.”

  —Fantasy Literature

  Ace Books by Christina Henry

  BLACK WINGS

  BLACK NIGHT

  BLACK HOWL

  BLACK LAMENT

  BLACK CITY

  BLACK

  CITY

  CHRISTINA HENRY

  ACE BOOKS, NEW YORK

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) • Penguin Group (Australia), 707 Collins Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3008, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) • Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) • Penguin Books (South Africa), Rosebank Office Park, 181 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parktown North 2193, South Africa • Penguin China, B7 Jiaming Center, 27 East Third Ring Road North, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100020, China

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  BLACK CITY

  An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Ace mass-market edition / March 2013

  Copyright © 2013 by Tina Raffaele.

  Cover art by Kris Keller.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-61954-4

  ACE

  Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ACE and the “A” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  ALWAYS LEARNING PEARSON

  For my sisters three

  Marnie, Kimberly and Sherri

  With love

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As always, tremendous thanks to my editor, Danielle Stockley, who makes my job easier by being amazing at hers.

  Many, many thanks to Rosanne Romanello and Brady McReynolds.

  Special thanks to Krista McNamara and Chloe Neill for general awesomeness.

  A big shout-out to the staff at Einstein Bros. on Southport, especially Cynthia and BJ.

  Lots of love to my family, especially Mom and Dad and Chris and Henry.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

/>   Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  1

  JUDE, SAMIEL AND NATHANIEL STOOD IN FRONT OF the TV, their eyes grave. They cleared a space for me so I could see.

  At first I wasn’t sure what I was looking at. A reporter’s voice came intermittently over the images, but the camera kept jiggling everywhere, and it was hard to see exactly what was going on. People were screaming and running, but I couldn’t see what they were screaming at and running from.

  Then the camera finally stabilized, and I realized what I was looking at. It was live footage from Daley Plaza, and the camera was shooting the action just in front of the Picasso statue.

  There were vampires everywhere, and the sun blazed down on the plaza.

  “Gods above and below,” I whispered. “Azazel’s formula worked.”

  The angle of the camera shifted and tipped to one side. Blood splattered over the lens. The reporter stopped speaking. The animal growls of vampires and the sickening squelch of flesh being eaten broadcast far too clearly.

  “We have to do something,” I said.

  “You can’t fly anymore,” Beezle pointed out. “No wings. And you’re wearing your pajamas.”

  A woman’s high-pitched wail broke through the sound of feasting.

  “I can carry you,” Nathaniel said, and I ran for my things.

  Jude had already changed into a wolf, discarded his clothes, ran to the door.

  I grabbed my sword, pulled my boots over my pajama pants, yanked on my coat and followed Jude. Nathaniel was right behind me, Samiel close on his heels.

  Beezle launched from the mantel to my shoulder as I opened the front door. Jude darted down the stairs in front of me.

  “Why can’t you stay home where I know you’ll be safe?” I said to Beezle as he crawled inside my coat.

  “Like I would miss this,” he said, his voice muffled. “And besides, somebody needs to make sure you don’t go dark side.”

  I ignored his jibe. I’d made some questionable choices lately, to be sure, but when I looked back over them I wasn’t sure I could have made different ones. And there were far more important things to worry about right now than my shades of gray.

  Jude burst through each of the front doors and bounded onto the porch, my apartment door slamming against the wall as he went through with a burst of speed.

  By the time Nathaniel, Samiel and I had clattered down the front steps, Jude was already gone.

  Nathaniel scooped me up, carrying me like a child, and opened his wings. Samiel lifted off a moment later. As we rose above the treetops I realized that neither of them was under a cloak of magic.

  “That was a little conspicuous,” I said. “I wonder what the neighbors will make of two angels taking off from my front lawn.”

  “Given all the weird shit that occurs in the nexus in and around our house, they probably won’t be surprised in the least,” Beezle said. “Besides, vampires are eating up all the nice little commuters in the middle of the day. I don’t think the regular rules are going to apply from now on.”

  As we sped downtown as fast as Nathaniel and Samiel could fly, I knew Beezle was right. In a single instant everything had changed. The world that had been hidden from normal people, a world of creatures they’d seen only in their dreams and nightmares, had been split wide-open. Nothing would ever be the same again.

  The news report had come from Daley Plaza, the distinctive figure of the Picasso statue looming in the background of the shot. Nathaniel angled a little west from the lake and headed toward the plaza.

  As we got closer I could see traffic snarled on the surrounding streets, buses and taxis at a standstill, drivers abandoning their vehicles to run. People crammed on the stairwell to the El, pushing, shoving, stepping on anyone who tripped and fell. The vampires were monsters to be feared, but people didn’t exactly show the best face of humanity at times like this.

  Then we were over the plaza, and it was worse, far worse, than I’d imagined.

  I’d thought that Azazel’s potion had to be limited, that there couldn’t possibly be that many vamps colluding with him. And even if there were, I’d assumed his death would have cut off the production of the serum that allowed the vamps to walk in sunlight without turning to flames.

  After all, Jude, Nathaniel and I had fought several perfectly ordinary vampires at Azazel’s mansion only a couple of weeks before.

  But there were hundreds, maybe thousands, of vampires on the streets below. They poured from the blue line subway station, emerged from the sewers through manhole covers, an endless seething mass of bloodthirsty insects falling upon any human they could find.

  I’ve never liked vampires, even when they’ve kept a low profile. I’d always suspected their veneer of civility was just that, and I’ve never bought into the notion that it’s romantic to have your blood drained by a vamp.

  This was one occasion when I would have been happy to be proven wrong. It was pretty clear from the carnage going on below us that vampires didn’t entertain any romantic notions about humans. To them, we were nothing more than walking, talking bags of meat.

  Beezle poked his head out of the lapel of my coat and looked down. “Gods above and below. Where do you even start?” For once there was no sarcasm in his voice.

  “We just have to do what we can,” I said, and tried to sound confident. “Let’s go, Nathaniel.”

  He brought us down to the platform that the Picasso statue rested upon, which gave us a slightly elevated view of the plaza. On any given day you can see a few brave kids climbing the tilted platform and sliding, whooping and hollering, to the ground below.

  Today it was covered with the spattered blood of dozens of victims.

  I leapt from the top, swinging my sword to slice the head from the nearest vampire I could find. When that one was dust, I moved to the next one. I was vaguely aware of Nathaniel and Samiel fighting around me, and of Jude joining the fray, snarling and barking as he tore the vamps’ throats out.

  I don’t know how long we fought. I punched, kicked, hacked, slashed and watched heads roll away, disintegrating into dust as they went. And I kept doing it, over and over and over again.

  Still the vampires came.

  Still more of them poured from the ground like cicadas emerging from hibernation. And nobody showed up to help us.

  The Agency was a short walk from where we fought the tide. I imagined large numbers of Agents were engaged with trying to keep up with the souls pouring from the bodies of the dead, but why not send the rest of the Agents to fight the vampires? The Agency’s willfully blind attitude about not getting involved in the actions of other supernatural courts surely couldn’t extend to ignoring a massacre under their noses.

  Or maybe it could, since the cavalry never arrived.

  After several hours of killing vampires, I slipped.

  I was tired, hungry and pregnant, and I wasn’t completely on my game after a week spent fighting battle after battle.

  My boot heel skidded in a pool of blood, and so I was just a little shy of complete decapitation on the vamp I battled. I landed backward, banged the back of my head against the sidewalk, and saw stars for a moment.

  My field of vision was filled with the slavering jaws of the vampire I hadn’t quite killed, ready to eat my face off. There was no time to think, no time to perform a spell.

  Then the vampire was gone, and Nathaniel picked me up from the ground and carried me away.

  “What are you doing?” I screamed. “We can’t leave. We can’t leave those people down there alone.”

  “We cannot do any more,” Nathaniel said grimly. “There are four of us, and thousands of them.”

  “We can’t leave,” I said again. I’d never run from a fight in m
y life.

  Nathaniel landed on a nearby roof. Samiel was beside us holding Jude, still in wolf form, in his arms.

  “Look,” Nathaniel said angrily, holding me by the shoulders so I could see what was below. “The city is overrun. We can’t do anything else.”

  I stared down. It was so much worse from up here, where you could see the pouring mass of vampires undulating through the city streets, into the buildings and buses, leaving empty husks of humanity behind them.

  It seemed that the more people who were killed, the more ferocious the vamps became.

  “It’s a feeding frenzy,” I said, sickened. “How can we leave them down there, without anyone to defend them?”

  “The police are fighting back,” Beezle said, his head popping out of my jacket.

  From our vantage point on the roof we could see the teams moving in, hastily mounting barricades. The percussion of gunfire was added to the chorus of screams that echoed in the canyons of the city. My city, overrun by vampires.

  “No,” I said angrily. “We have to go back. We have to help.”

  Nathaniel’s hands rested on my shoulders and he spun me around to face him. His face was twisted in anger and, to my surprise, fear.

  “Just what is it that you think you can do?” he said, giving me a little shake. “Do you not value your life at all?”

  I saw Samiel move out of the corner of my eye, obviously intending to defend me from Nathaniel, but I slapped my ex-fiancé’s hands away before Samiel could.

  “I value my life as much as you do yours,” I said. “But I don’t value it more than any of them do.” I pointed toward the terrified mass of humanity below.

  “So you would kill yourself to save one of them?” Nathaniel said.

  “I don’t think I’m superior to them the way you do,” I said coldly.

  Nathaniel threw his hands in the air. “Gods above and below, you are the most thickheaded woman I have ever met. Do you really think this is about superiority? Think about your baby. Think about the people who love you. Don’t throw yourself away on the impossible.”