Black City Read Online Free PDF Page B

was a little more activity here—a nurse moving from room to room, patients being pushed along the corridor by an orderly—but it wasn’t the panicked rushing of folks who’d just seen a vision from their nightmares. I looked at Nathaniel, and he shook his head.
    We skipped the next floor since Jude and Samiel were there, and presumably any monsters would be dispatched by them.
    Nathaniel had dropped the cloak that covered us when we entered the hospital. I understood why. It required a lot of energy to maintain a veil and stay on your guard against demonic attacks. It was doubly hard to keep four people covered.
    The thing was, Nathaniel’s wings were such an essential part of his appearance that I didn’t often think about them. Plus I was little preoccupied with finding the pix demon and not thinking too hard on what Nathaniel had said about my motivations.
    So when we came face-to-face with a security guard on the next floor, I wasn’t thinking about the vampires, or the fact that all the humans were on edge. I wasn’t thinking that Nathaniel would look extremely strange to a normal.
    We pushed through the door, and it was just unfortunate luck that the security guard stood there. And that his weapon was in his hand, and that he was ready to go off at the least provocation.
    I was in front of Nathaniel, and the guard was a few feet in front of me. He turned as soon as he heard activity behind him, and while he was definitely tense, he might not have fired if he hadn’t seen Nathaniel’s wings.
    “What the hell is that thing?” he shouted, and pulled the trigger. His hand was shaking, so his aim probably wasn’tas good as it normally would be. Likely it was the first time he had ever fired his weapon on the job.
    Which was why the bullet hit me instead of Nathaniel. And why Nathaniel blasted the guard with nightfire as I fell to the ground, the bullet tearing through the soft flesh just under the joint of my shoulder, just above my heart. I screamed, not because it hurt but because it was too late for the guard. Nathaniel had killed him before my eyes.
    I could feel the burning path where the bullet had torn through me, the wet stickiness of blood flowing from an open wound.
    “Madeline,” Nathaniel said, already turning to me, falling to his knees beside me, the guard forgotten.
    “What the hell did you do that for?” I shouted. Rather, I wanted to shout, but my voice barely rose above my normal speaking tone.
    Inside me, my baby gave a little flutter, but nothing more. I guess a little physical distress was old news at this point.
    The guard was prone on the ground, a smoking hole where his chest used to be. Farther down the hall behind him, a male doctor in a white lab coat stood frozen in place, his eyes wide.
    Nathaniel scrabbled at my coat, pulled it away from my shoulder so that he could see the blood-soaked mess beneath. My sweater and shirt stuck to the open wound. He put his hand over the hole where the bullet had entered.
    The warmth of the sun lit my blood, flowed from his hand and through the heart of me, healing the bullet wound as if it had never been. I sat up, still a little woozy. Blood loss is blood loss, whether your wound heals immediately or not. It takes a while to get your strength back if you’ve got anything bigger than a shaving cut.
    The doctor watched us now with speculation instead of fear. Nathaniel had exposed his powers by healing me.
    “What did you kill the guard for?” I hissed as Nathaniel helped me to my feet. I don’t think he yet realized we had an audience.
    “He shot you,” Nathaniel said, frowning.
    “He was scared to death. He didn’t know what he was doing.”
    “He shot you,” Nathaniel repeated.
    I put my hands to my face for a moment. “In point of fact, he was trying to shoot you and got me by accident.”
    “That hardly recommends him,” Nathaniel said.
    “Couldn’t you have stunned him instead of killing him?”
    “I was not contemplating