At the time it seemed insane for them to try to tick off the Morningstar, but if they were working with this army of vampires, perhaps they thought they had an advantage.
My second thought was that one of the Grigori had taken up Azazel’s personal mission. Certainly any of the Grigori would be powerful enough to cast the sleeping spell, and presumably they would also be able to control the army of vampires.
“But who’s the contact?” I murmured.
“Pardon?” Nathaniel said, frowning. He looked like he was trying to do intense mathematical calculations in his head.
“I was just thinking. There has to be a vampire overlord or whatever, right? They’ve got a pretty rigid court system, as far as I know.”
“They do,” Nathaniel acknowledged. “And their heads of court are kings and queens, like the Faerie.”
“So they have little courts that are overseen by one big court?”
Nathaniel nodded. “You are thinking that the vampire king had to know about this prior to the attack.”
“If he’s got a good grip on his kingdom, then he should definitely have known about this. Is his court in Chicago?”
Nathaniel shook his head. “No. He is based in New York.”
“Isn’t it interesting?” I mused. “Lucifer’s court is in Los Angeles. The vampire king’s court is on the opposite coast. The high court of Faerie is in some dimension all its own. And yet all this trouble is here at my door.”
“Lord Lucifer has made it very clear through both word and deed that he would like you to be his heir.”
“So you’re saying that as long as Lucifer keeps going around talking me up, the other courts will swipe at me?”
Nathaniel’s eyes were troubled. “You would be safer if you would accept Lord Lucifer’s offer.”
“I don’t want to be his heir,” I said. “More important, I don’t want my child to be his heir.”
“I do not know if you can resist for much longer. Your life is becoming more dangerous by the moment. And Lord Lucifer has a way of boxing you in before you realize the walls are there.”
Emotion flickered across his face.
“Look, let’s just get these people as safe as we can so we can go home. I need to figure out some way to eliminate these vampires.”
“I believe that we can put some form of protection over the hospital,” Nathaniel said. “But in order to do it correctly we will need to leave the building, which will put us at risk.”
“Why will we need to leave?”
“Because the conditions of the enchantment will prevent creatures of supernatural origin from entering. If we are inside when the magic is settled, we would be forcibly ejected by the spell.”
“But what about the Agents that are still in the hospital? Samiel and Jude got Chloe out—at least I hope they did,” I said, fumbling for my cell phone so I could see whether Samiel had sent me a text. I patted all of my pockets and came up empty. “For the love of the Morningstar. I lost it again.”
“The Agents will be protected,” Nathaniel said. “Their magic is different from a supernatural creature’s.”
“How?”
“Agents are human,” Nathaniel said simply. “They may have magical abilities, but at the core of it they are human. Their essence is not born of the otherworld, but this one.”
“But the spell will keep out vampires and pix demons and all that?”
Nathaniel nodded. “If it works correctly. If we can project enough power. This is a very large hospital, and I am presuming that you are not simply interested in protecting this building.”
I shook my head. “Of course not. Why would we protect the helpless patients in this building and ignore the others? I wonder if the whole complex is under the sleeping spell.”
“We are not going to check,” Nathaniel said.
“So what are we going to do?”
Nathaniel looked uncertain for a moment, like he knew I wouldn’t like what he was going to say. “We have to combine our powers.”
“Okay…”
“We will need to mingle our blood in order to most effectively achieve this.”
“Are we talking about an I’m-your-blood-brother paper cut here, or a gaping wound? Because I’ve had enough gaping wounds today, thank you.”
“The cut itself will be relatively small,” Nathaniel assured me. “But combining our magic will feel… intimate.”
Now I was the uncertain one. “You mean, I’ll feel you inside me? And you’ll be able to feel me?”
Nathaniel nodded. “I understand if such a thing is reprehensible to you.”
Reprehensible? Not exactly. More like a betrayal. Because there was only one man I’d ever been intimate with, and mingling anything with Nathaniel felt a lot like I was spitting on Gabriel’s grave.
But if I didn’t do this, then everyone in this hospital was nothing but a buffet for the vampire horde.
I held out my hand to Nathaniel.
4
NATHANIEL TOOK MY HAND IN HIS. HIS SKIN WAS SO much warmer than mine. Angels are born of the sun, and the light of the sun beats within them. I had the heartstone of an angel, but my light would always be tempered by my humanity. I would never really be one of them.
He turned my hand over, drew his sword. “It will only hurt for a moment.”
“I’ve had worse than a slice from a sharp blade,” I said.
All the monsters I’d fought flickered in my memory for a moment, and then Nathaniel cut my palm open with the sword. I flinched, because it’s natural to flinch when you see your flesh rent open, but I didn’t make a noise.
Nathaniel repeated the same action on his own palm. He held the bloodied hand up for me to match. I pressed my wound against his and felt the tingling of magic, still banked.
He pulled me close, wrapped his other arm around my waist. I was hyperaware of all the places where our bodies touched, of the warmth of his breath on my hair. The air crackled with energy.
“Hold tight,” he murmured.
The glass of a nearby window exploded outward. Nathaniel shot through the opening and into the sky. We hovered above the roofs of the giant complex that composed the hospital.
Nathaniel leaned close to my ear. “I want you to push your power up and out, into the place where our blood touches. I will direct the spell. Now.”
I closed my eyes, found the place inside me where my ability lay quietly waiting for me, and I woke it up. I didn’t try to control or direct it anywhere except toward Nathaniel. The power roared forth, an unrestrained howl. As the heart of my magic met Nathaniel’s, my eyes flew open and met his.
Magic scorched the air.
Bitter wind cut through our clothes but I barely felt it. All I could feel was Nathaniel. It was like he was running wild in my blood, burning me from the inside out.
I knew his power, and his heart. I felt his struggle to direct the spell, to corral this wild surge that neither of us had expected.
I felt the confusion that roiled inside him, the passion for me that he had proclaimed but that I had always denied.
I don’t know what I revealed to him, but he looked as shocked as I felt.
We were locked together by magic and surprise, by a spell that had gone out of control almost as soon as it had been cast. The power poured forth from us, its strength almost beyond comprehension. It settled beneath us, draping all the innocents below in a protective veil. I knew that no vampire or demon would be able to harm the
