Black Howl

by Christina Henry

  “Metatrion has been the Hound of the Hunt since before the Fall. What do you think the Grigori will make of that at Samiel’s trial?” Gabriel said angrily. “Do you think that it will dispose them to think more kindly of Samiel?”

  “I was trying to save Samiel,” I snapped back, my voice little more than a croaky whisper. “And Metatrion would have killed me if he had the chance.”

  “He was strangling her to death before I dropped a bookend on his head,” Beezle said.

  Gabriel turned away, rubbing his face. “I fear there will be consequences for this.”

  “There always are,” I said, wrapping my arms around myself. The apartment was freezing in the January cold now that half my windows were open. “What should we do with Metatrion?”

  “Call Lord Azazel,” Gabriel said. “Perhaps if you explain the incident to your father first, it will go better for you tomorrow.”

  “Not a chance,” I said. “First of all, Azazel will be a lot more annoying about this than the rest of the Grigori. He’s always going on about how my actions reflect poorly on him. And he’ll try to use this incident as leverage to make me do something he wants me to do, like marry Nathaniel.”

  “You must contact one of the fallen,” Gabriel said. “They will be furious if you do not return Metatrion’s body to them.”

  “I’d sooner call Lucifer than Azazel. At least Lucifer seems to like me.”

  “Madeline, do not be deceived by Lucifer’s affection for you. If he allows you more leverage than others, it is because he desires something of you.”

  “I’m not stupid, even though you and everyone else insist on acting like I am. I said I’d sooner call Lucifer than Azazel, not that I would.”

  “Then what will you do?” Gabriel asked.

  I shrugged. “I’m going to Azazel’s court tomorrow. I’ll bring Metatrion’s body with me then.”

  “I am not certain that would be a wise decision, particularly when you will be arguing for Samiel’s life. It might be…inflammatory.”

  “Maybe,” I said, thinking of something Lucifer had said the day before. “Or maybe it demonstrates strength. The Grigori respect power.”

  “As long as it does not conflict with theirs,” Gabriel said.

  “Look, let’s just put Metatrion in the basement for now, okay? We need to get these windows covered before we die of hypothermia.”

  “I just hope the neighbors don’t see us putting a body in the basement,” Beezle muttered.

  I snorted. “Are you kidding? They haven’t noticed demons on the front lawn, decaying dragons in the backyard, crazy shapeshifters committing murder in the alley or any of the other insanity that goes on around here. If I didn’t know better, I’d think the house existed in a pocket dimension.”

  “There’s a first time for everything. Demons can be explained away as a hallucination, but no one can ignore a dead body.”

  “Can we just get through this without hearing one of your premonitions of doom?” I said, walking back to the hallway to Metatrion’s prone form.

  I picked up the feet of the dead Hound, and Gabriel took the shoulders.

  “Fine. Don’t listen to me. You’d just better hope that he doesn’t start to smell.”

  Gabriel and I wrestled Metatrion into the basement and covered him with a tarp. It looked totally conspicuous, exactly as if we’d covered a body with a piece of plastic.

  “I’m taking a shower,” I said.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” Beezle said as he followed me up the stairs.

  “I haven’t forgotten your reward,” I said, wondering just when I was going to get to Ann Sather for cinnamon rolls with everything else I had to do that day. “I’m not going anywhere until I’m clean.”

  Gabriel walked silently behind. I wondered what he was thinking. Was he thinking of his half brother being taken before the Grigori? Was he thinking that I’d made yet another gigantic faux pas by killing the Hound of the Hunt? Or was he thinking of what had happened before Lucifer had shown up the night before, and what might have happened if the Morningstar hadn’t interfered?

  I knew we needed to talk about it—again—but I had too many other things on my plate at the moment. I wondered how Jude and the pack were managing the cubs. I needed to get those camera things to J.B. They were definitely related to the ghosts that had been appearing all over Chicago. And that reminded me.

  “Beezle, do you know where Samiel put those machines that we got from the cave?”

  Beezle looked offended. “Of course not. You told Samiel to hide them.”

  “Please. You are so freaking nosy there’s no way you could help yourself from following him.”

  “He put them in the clothes dryer in the basement,” Beezle said without a trace of shame. “I suggested the refrigerator, since we never have any food in it…”

  “Because someone who shall remain nameless eats everything as soon as I come home from the grocery store…”

  “But he seemed to think they would be less obvious in the dryer.” Beezle sighed, and I knew that he was worried about Samiel. Ever since Samiel had arrived Beezle had treated Samiel like the brother he’d never had.

  “I’ll get him back from the Grigori,” I said.

  Beezle nodded and flew to the front room to sit on the mantel over the fire, his favorite brooding spot. Gabriel followed with a broom to sweep up the broken glass. I went to get dressed, and to cry in the shower where neither of them could hear me.

  I had just finished braiding my hair into a long plait down my back when the front doorbell rang. Beezle flew into the bedroom a few seconds later.

  “It’s J.B.,” he announced.

  “Tell Gabriel to let him in,” I said, pulling my dusty black combat boots on and lacing them up over the ankles of my jeans.

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea. They have a tendency to act stupid where you’re concerned. And J.B. won’t like the implications of Gabriel answering the door.”

  “I really don’t care what J.B. likes and doesn’t like,” I said. “Just tell Gabriel.”

  “Oookay. Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Beezle said.

  I was sure that J.B. was there to bring bad news in any case, since it just seemed like it was going to be that sort of week.

  I finished dressing and walked down the hall to the dining room. J.B. stood in the open front door glaring at Gabriel. Gabriel had his arms crossed and was leaning nonchalantly on the table while giving J.B. death-ray eyes. Beezle sat on the side table, and he turned to raise his eyebrows in an I-told-you-so way as I entered.

  Gabriel had covered the windows with plastic so that we weren’t getting blasted by cold air, but the room was still freezing. I wore a long-sleeved shirt under a gray wool cabled turtleneck sweater—I am branching out from my usual uniform of black—and I was still chilly. I tucked my hands inside my sleeves.

  J.B. broke his staring contest with Gabriel to scowl at me when I entered.

  “Do you want to tell me why we intercepted a nine-one-one call this morning reporting a dead body in your basement?”

  “Ha!” Beezle shouted, pumping his little fist in the air. “I told you that somebody would notice.”

  “What do you mean, you intercepted a call?” I asked. “Am I under surveillance?”

  “Of course you are,” J.B. said in a tone that implied I was an idiot. “It’s in the best interests of the Agency to publicly suppress all the weird shit that seems to happen at this address.”

  “The neighbors do notice, then?”

  “They’d have to be either dead or stupid not to. So tell me why it looks like there’s been a war in here, and why you’ve got bruises on your throat.”

  I summed up the morning’s events. J.B.’s eyebrows went up to his hairline when I told him that it was the Hound of the Hunt in the basement.

  “I don’t know whether to be impressed or depressed,” J.B. said.

  “I often feel that way around Madeline,” Gabri
el said, and the two of them shared a look of understanding.

  “What’s to be depressed about?”

  “You’re going to have to pay a price for killing Metatrion,” J.B. said.

  “That happens to me all the time,” I said.

  “And your enemies, which include my beloved mother, will perceive you as a greater threat since you managed to kill such a powerful being. Which means they will redouble their efforts to kill you.”

  “Well,” I said, clapping my hands together, “what’s a few extra death threats when you’ve already got dozens of them? I have something more important to show you, anyway.”

  I recounted the story of the cubs’ kidnapping and what I’d found in the cave as J.B., Gabriel and Beezle followed me into the basement. I pulled the bag of cameras from the dryer.

  “That’s some security system you’ve got there,” J.B. said sarcastically.

  “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but my house was destroyed this morning and I’ve hardly had time to think about putting these in a safer place. Besides, now you can take them back to the Agency and put them behind a million layers of lead and steel if you want.”

  J.B. untangled the knotted sleeves of my coat and pulled one of the machines from the bag, inspecting it. “It looks like a digital camera.”

  “I know. I can’t figure out what they were doing to the cubs, but it definitely damaged their brains. The older cubs were acting exactly like the ghost I found.”

  “So, is whatever is in this machine killing them? Or is it just damaging them beyond repair and their deaths are unrelated?”

  “I can easily see someone dying by accident once they’ve been exposed to this machine,” I said slowly. “They could walk into traffic, or step off a cliff, and never even know where they are.”

  “But it still doesn’t explain why they aren’t being tracked by the Agency. We’re finding these ghosts by accident, not at the sites of their deaths. If they have souls, then we should know when and how they’re going to die. But that’s not happening.”

  “What if the mental damage is affecting the way the Agency perceives these people? They still have souls, but the Agency isn’t recognizing them as such because of…whatever it is that this machine does.”

  J.B. looked doubtful. “We’ve taken the souls of people in many different mental states over the past several millennia. Recognition has never been an issue.”

  “What else could explain how so many people are disappearing from the Agency’s radar?”

  “I don’t know,” J.B. said, obviously frustrated. Then he grinned at me. “But I’m sure that if I wait, you’ll find out for me.”

  “That’s nice,” I muttered. “Like I don’t have enough to do. And somehow I have to make new windows—and a new wall—appear out of thin air.”

  “I can do that,” J.B. said, and pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. He barked a few terse orders at the person on the other end of the line and hung up. “Someone will be here in about an hour to fix everything.”

  I stared at him. “You know, yesterday morning you were acting like I had a contagious disease. You haven’t spoken civilly to me for weeks. Do you have a multiple personality disorder or something?”

  He shrugged and looked uncomfortably at Gabriel and Beezle, who were not disguising their interest in the least.

  “Don’t mind them,” I said. “I can’t do anything these days without an audience.”

  “Maybe I thought about some of what you said yesterday, and realized I was being unfair to you.”

  “Can someone run and check the temperature in Hell, please? Because that sounded a lot like an apology.”

  “You could just say, ‘Thank you for the windows, J.B.,’ and stop giving me a hard time.”

  “Thank you for the windows, J.B.,” I parroted.

  “And thank you for these,” he said, tying the knot of my coat back together and slinging it over his shoulder. “I’ll let you know what I find. Don’t forget your pickup at two.”

  “So that’s when it is,” I said. “You wouldn’t, uh, happen to know where it is, would you?”

  He rolled his eyes and pulled the piece of paper with the information from his pocket. “I had a feeling.”

  “I’ve never missed a pickup before,” I said, stung. I might have chaos around me at all times but I’d never failed in my duties as an Agent.

  “You’ve never had a dead body in your basement before,” he said, leaning forward to kiss my cheek. I let him, because I do love J.B. Just not the way that I love Gabriel.

  Gabriel stiffened and J.B. smiled. “See you around, Black.”

  It was only after he left that I realized he’d taken my winter coat with him.

  I sighed, locked the door and turned to see Beezle fluttering in the air with a hopeful look on his face.

  “I don’t have time to go to the restaurant before the window guys get here,” I said. “I’ll make your cinnamon rolls from scratch.”

  Beezle grinned. “I don’t care how I get them, as long as I get what I want.”

  I thought of Lucifer and the Grigori, and every other creature around me that seemed to stop at nothing until they’d achieved their aims. “Yeah, you and everybody else.”

  8

  BY DINNERTIME I HAD A REPAIRED APARTMENT, A COMPLETED soul pickup and a cinnamon-roll-stuffed gargoyle. And I do mean stuffed. He ate enough rolls for a whole family of gargoyles. I didn’t say anything, though. When Beezle is upset he eats, and he was really upset about Samiel, even if he didn’t say it.

  It felt strange to go to bed that night without Samiel in the house. I’d become used to hearing him moving around the apartment, and to the easy company he provided. Samiel was just about the only person in my life who didn’t ask anything of me.

  Gabriel had returned to his own apartment downstairs after the repairmen had completed their work. I didn’t follow him. I honestly wasn’t up to another emotional battering.

  I hardly slept, even though I desperately needed it. Every time I closed my eyes I imagined the Grigori torturing Samiel for his crimes, and that is hardly conducive to a restful night. At dawn I gave up the pretense and climbed out of bed. Beezle was already awake and digging into the emergency chocolate.

  I leaned against the kitchen counter and raised my eyebrow. He ignored me and stuffed a handful of dark chocolate squares into his beak.

  “Those are meant to be savored, you know,” I said.

  “Believe me,” Beezle said, through his stuffed mouth, “I am savoring every bite.”

  I watched Beezle for a few more minutes, and then wandered over to the refrigerator to see if there was anything edible in there. Two eggs, half a carton of milk and one sad-looking stalk of celery in the crisper drawer. I didn’t even have condiments on the door. For a person who occasionally freelanced as a food writer my fridge was pretty pathetic.

  “So, how are you planning on pulling this one off?” Beezle asked. “You can’t get around the fact that Samiel did release Ramuell, and Ramuell did kill a whole bunch of people. Plus, Samiel kidnapped Gabriel and sold him to Focalor, and I can’t even begin to explain to you how many rules of etiquette he broke by doing that.”

  “Don’t you think the murder of dozens of people would rank higher than some infraction of etiquette?”

  “The Grigori have been alive for ages untold. They’ve had plenty of practice being petty.”

  I stared out the new windows that had been installed the day before in the breakfast nook. They were nicer than the old windows, which had been ancient and drafty and lacking the double-paned fanciness of the new ones.

  “I don’t think the facts are ultimately that important to the Grigori. I think if I can demonstrate that I am an adversary to be respected, then I’ll win. If I can’t, then Samiel…”

  “Will be beheaded in front of the whole court, no doubt,” Beezle said.

  “You’re such a comfort to me,” I said.

  “And just how are yo
u going to demonstrate that they should respect you?”

  “It’s about power,” I said slowly. “Not only the power that you wield, but also the power that you command. That’s why Lucifer is always trying to collect me.”

  “You don’t have anyone in your pile of chess pieces,” Beezle said.

  “Maybe not directly. Maybe not the way that Lucifer or Amarantha would. But I do have friends, and allies. And with the fallen, so much is about perception. If they perceive my allies as pawns that I control, then in the eyes of the Grigori I am powerful.”

  “Who are you going to get in the next couple of hours besides that moony-eyed devil that lives downstairs?”

  I gave him a look.

  “Don’t think I don’t know what you were doing in the yard the other night.”

  “Okay, Dad. Anyway, J.B. would come, and Jude, probably.”

  “Yeah, that’ll be great. The son of the woman who tried to help Focalor with his uprising against Lucifer and a wolf who despises anything to do with the fallen. Excellent choices, Maddy.”

  “It’s the best we have,” I said, stung. “Besides, we need someone to carry Metatrion, and Jude is the strongest creature I know besides Samiel.”

  “I almost forgot about Metatrion. This is going to be awesome. You show up with two crummy allies and the remains of the Hound of the Hunt.”

  “I have Gabriel, too,” I reminded him.

  “The half brother of the accused.”

  “You act like I shouldn’t even bother showing up,” I said.

  “I just don’t think you know what you’re getting into with the Grigori.”

  “That’s what you said about Amarantha and the faerie court, too.”

  “Look how well that turned out.”

  “I think it turned out fine. I defeated Focalor’s uprising, suppressed Amarantha’s plan to breed a child of Lucifer’s bloodline and survived the Maze.”

  “And now Amarantha and Focalor hate you and want to hunt you to the ends of the Earth.”

  “I can’t worry about the fallout from doing the right thing. Every time I turn around I have another enemy no matter what, just because I’m Azazel’s child or Lucifer’s descendant. And I don’t think that you should underestimate me just because everyone else does.”