Black City

cavernous stone hall, set with flickering torches. All around the room hung cages, and inside the cages were Agents. My heart stopped when I recognized them.

“Oh, my god. J.B.,” I said, and fell to my knees. “J.B.”

I crawled closer to the screen, searching the blur of faces for one face, the one person I needed to see. Therion spoke on, but nothing he said registered until I heard my name.

“…Madeline Black, this message is for you. If you willingly give yourself in exchange, then all of these innocents,” Therion said, and the way he emphasized “innocents” let me know that the choice of Agents for this display was no accident, “will go free. If not, then I will slaughter all of them three days hence, at the hour of noon, and then my horde will move out of Chicago. Human authorities will not be able to stop us. We will spread like a cancer over this country, and every person will succumb. But if Madeline Black will voluntarily turn herself in at a Vampire Authority station before three days have passed, then all of these people will go free, and we will withdraw. This is Madeline Black.”

Therion gestured, and an image appeared over the screen. It was a still image of me fighting the vampires in Daley Plaza. The photo had caught me in action, sword mid-swing, my other hand behind me, my overcoat billowing, my boots covered in blood.

I touched my hair, which now brushed the tops of my shoulders. In the picture it was still cropped close to my head.

“If you see this woman, or know her, I urge you to turn her in at your closest Vampire Authority station. Madeline Black, if you are listening, know that you can save millions of lives if you would simply come forward.”

The camera focused on Therion’s face again, the humans in cages disappearing from the screen. “I’ll be waiting.”

The picture went dark.

8

THE BROADCAST CUT BACK TO THE ANCHOR.

“No!” I slammed my hand against the TV screen. “No! I didn’t see him. I couldn’t find him.”

The news anchor started talking again. The still photo of me was up in the corner of the picture. Underneath the photo, in bright yellow letters, were the words, “Who is Madeline Black?”

“Shut the TV off,” Jude said.

“Maybe they’ll show the message again,” I said, my eyes glued to the screen, willing the newscaster to show me that precious few seconds again so that I could see whether J.B. was there, whether J.B. had been captured.

“Shut it off,” Jude repeated.

I felt his hands on my shoulders, prying me away from the screen. “J.B.,” I said.

Jude turned me to face him. “You don’t know that he’s there.”

“I can’t leave any of them there, but especially not him,” I said.

“You cannot be considering acquiescing to Therion’s demands,” Nathaniel said. “You said yourself that if the vampires had what they wanted, then they would have no motivation to withdraw.”

“That was before I found out they were holding Agents hostage,” I said. “And what in the name of the Morningstar is a Vampire Authority station?”

Samiel reentered the room carrying a plate with scrambled eggs, bacon and toast. I sat on the couch next to Chloe, who looked at my plate and then at Samiel. She blinked her eyes once.

I’ll make more, he signed, and went back to the kitchen.

“So, yeah, Vampire Authority station,” Chloe said. “A lot has changed while you were passed out.”

“Like what?” I said through a mouthful of eggs. “Has Therion established some kind of fascist vampire state?”

“Actually, you’re not far off,” Chloe said. “The day you came home, all of the vampires suddenly stopped rampaging all over the place.”

“Half of them disappeared off the streets altogether, and the other half started marching in the streets in military order,” Jude said. “Then they went building to building collecting human stragglers and rounding them up for containment.”

“Containment?” I said, scraping my fork against my plate and realizing I’d already inhaled everything on it.

“Camps,” Jude said. “They’ve got hundreds of people penned up just west of the Loop in the parking lots around the United Center.”

“On the second day the flyers appeared,” Chloe said. She grabbed a piece of paper from the end table and handed it to me.

It would have been comical if we weren’t in such deadly circumstance. The vamps had adopted the CTA’s “If you see something, say something” motto. It was emblazoned in large letters at the top of the page. Underneath the motto it read, “The time has come to restore civil order to this city. If you believe that you have seen a crime being committed, we urge you to report to your nearest Vampire Authority station. The personnel at these stations are there for you. The stations are conveniently located approximately every half mile throughout the city.”

At the bottom in bold letters it read, “TOGETHER WE CAN RESTORE ORDER TO CHICAGO.”

“I notice that they have neglected to mention they were the ones to disrupt the peace in the first place,” I said, tossing the flyer to the side in disgust. “Do you know if people are buying this bullshit?”

“I think some of them are,” Jude said. “People are scared. They don’t understand what’s going on. If they think that turning looters in will save their families, then they will do it.”

“Stupid,” I said. “They need to get off the grid, not draw attention to themselves.”

“Then today there was this message,” Chloe said, gesturing to the TV. “The major networks have been broadcasting it every hour or so. Along with plenty of speculation about who you are and why the vampires are so interested in you.”

“They can speculate. I hope they enjoy themselves,” I said, thinking. “They laid the groundwork for that message pretty neatly. Everyone in Chicago is going to be looking for me to turn me in, especially if they think the vamps will leave once they have me.”

I had a lot of problems to solve, but one that was more pressing than the others. “I need to get in touch with J.B. Are the phones working?”

“No,” Beezle said. “The electricity only came back on yesterday. The vamps must have turned the power back on just to make sure Therion’s message was broadcast.”

“I need to know if the vampires have him or not,” I said.

“Why? You’re only going to do something foolish to save those Agents from Therion anyway,” Beezle said. “What difference does it make if J.B.’s there or not?”

“Because I need to know if he’s safe,” I said.

“I don’t think anybody is safe anymore. The rules have changed,” Beezle said.

“This is not really the time for a philosophical discussion,” I said.

“I’ll go,” Jude said. “I can check his home and the Agency and find out if he’s been taken or not.”

“No,” I said. “We don’t need anyone else roaming the city out of communication.”

“Yeah,” Beezle said, looking pointedly at me. “When members of the group get separated, bad things happen.”

I knew what he was referring to, and was careful not to look at Nathaniel. I wasn’t going to rise to Beezle’s baiting.

“I can move through the streets as a wolf much more quickly and quietly than the rest of you,” Jude argued. “If I find J.B., I’ll bring him back here. If I don’t, then I’ll see if I can discover what happened to him.”

“I don’t like it,” I said. “If something happened to you, we’d have no way of knowing. If you want to go get J.B., then I’m going with you.”

“No, you’re not,” said everyone in the room.