Black Howl

by Christina Henry

  He flew toward the nephilim, but close to the ceiling so as to avoid detection. Beezle is so small that the monster could hardly have perceived him as a threat, even when he landed on the nephilim’s head. He clung to the back of the monster’s skull with his legs like a tiny demented monkey.

  Then he jammed his claws into the nephilim’s eyes. The nephilim screamed and reached to grab Beezle, but my clever gargoyle had already let go and flown up to the ceiling with the monster’s eyeballs sticking off the ends of his claws like some grisly cocktail snack.

  I ran into the fray and tackled the nephilim to the ground. It still screamed and thrashed. I gagged from the smell of sulfur coming off its body, then pushed away to my feet and beheaded the thing.

  It stopped screaming immediately.

  Beezle flicked the eyeballs off his claws and then flew down to Gabriel’s shoulder. He’s learned to tolerate Gabriel, but my husband is still not his favorite person, so I was surprised. At least, I was surprised until Beezle used Gabriel’s coat as a napkin to clean the gore off his fingernails.

  Gabriel shook his head in resignation.

  “Let’s help the other two,” I said, and we backtracked down the passage to the stairs.

  J.B. and Samiel were holding on, but barely. They had been pushed up the stairwell by the steadily increasing throng.

  “Where the hell does Azazel keep all these soldiers?” I asked incredulously.

  “Have you seen how big this house is?” Beezle said. “He could store them in the basement and never even know they were there.”

  We grimly reentered the battle, but it was quickly apparent that all we were doing was tiring ourselves out.

  “We need to distract them and make a break for it,” I told Gabriel.

  “I have something appropriate,” he said.

  He threw another blast of what looked like nightfire, but actually was a gigantic cloud of sulfurous smoke. The passage quickly filled up and everyone was coughing and groping.

  Gabriel grabbed my hand and pushed at Samiel, and we all ran up the stairs. A couple of soldiers followed us but J.B. leveled them before they had the chance to get too far.

  Gabriel was the only one who knew where Azazel’s quarters were, and he led us unerringly down the hall to the room at the very end.

  The door was unlocked, and we poured in, slamming the door shut behind us.

  I half expected Azazel to be waiting there, but there was no one.

  The portal spun in the corner. It was inside a glass case to protect the room from the constant force of suction that was generated.

  Bodies crashed into the door outside.

  “No time to celebrate,” I said to the others. “Let’s go.”

  I strode to the portal, pulling open the glass case. Lucifer’s tattoo wriggled in warning.

  “Yes, I know we’re in danger,” I said to my hand. “Thanks for the update.”

  Gabriel nudged me aside. “I will go first.”

  “We’re going home,” I said. “What difference can it possibly make?”

  “I will not take chances with your safety,” Gabriel said.

  “Will the two of you just hold hands and jump together so that we can get out of here already?” Beezle said. He’d switched to Samiel again.

  I took Gabriel’s hand firmly, thought of my backyard covered in snow, and we went through. I hoped the others would follow quickly.

  Gabriel squeezed my hand tight as we emerged into the early-winter night.

  I turned my head to smile up at him, and that was when I saw the sword protruding from his chest, and Azazel standing behind Gabriel with a look of malicious glee on his face.

  Gabriel released my hand and fell forward into the snow.

  “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” I screamed, and I turned on my father with a fury I had never felt before.

  I slashed at him with Lucifer’s sword, and a long cut formed across his chest. He narrowed his eyes and swiped back at me, the longer reach of his sword slicing into my arm. Blood flowed down the sleeve of my shirt—my jacket was long gone, caught on fire and discarded in the throne room.

  I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything except killing this monster called my father. My magic still lay quiet inside me, and I knew it would not wake. I had depleted myself too thoroughly at Azazel’s.

  I swiped at his face with the sword and gave him a cut to match the one on his other cheek. I felt numb inside, a machine with no purpose except to destroy this man. He seemed to realize this, and in any event he’d gotten what he came for—Gabriel.

  Azazel swung with his fist and punched me in the face. I saw stars and blackness spinning before me. I tried to hold myself up, tried to keep fighting. But my body was half-mortal, and it betrayed me.

  I fell to my knees, shaking my head, and when I looked up, Azazel was gone.

  He’d flown away like the coward he was, and because my power was gone I couldn’t follow him.

  I screamed his name into the darkness.

  There was nothing but the emptiness of night, and the flashing lights of airplanes blinking across the sky.

  “Know this,” I said to the darkness. “I am Lucifer’s Hound of the Hunt, and there is no place you can hide from me. I will hunt you to the end of your days. You will never know peace. You will never know rest. I will destroy you utterly, and the last face you see before you leave this Earth will be mine.”

  I stood wearily, using the sword as a staff to push me up, and turned to face that which I did not want to see.

  A pool of dark blood stained the snow around his body. Samiel, Beezle and the wolves, changed back into humans, stood beside him.

  “Where’s J.B.?” I asked.

  “He took Gabriel,” Beezle said. There were tears glittering on his cheeks.

  I looked again at the body, the thing that could not be Gabriel, and then back up at Beezle.

  “Took him?”

  “To the Door,” Beezle said.

  “The Door,” I said. “No. No. Gabriel wouldn’t choose the Door. He wouldn’t leave me. He knows I can see him. He would stay. He wouldn’t leave me.”

  “Maddy…” Beezle began.

  “No,” I said angrily, swiping at the tears that were falling now, falling so hard I could barely see. “I told you once before, when he was kidnapped. Gabriel would not leave me. He would stay with me. J.B. must have made him go. You know how J.B. feels about ghosts and paperwork.”

  I was babbling. I knew I was babbling. But it couldn’t be right. It couldn’t. Gabriel could not be dead, killed by Azazel, a maggot that had somehow crawled free. It should be Azazel who was dead, not Gabriel. Not my husband.

  My husband, I thought, and I broke.

  I screamed my pain and grief to the sky, a black howl that had no beginning and no end.

  19

  SAMIEL TRIED TO PICK ME UP, TO TAKE ME AWAY.

  “No,” I said, and when he tried to make me move anyway I hit him in the mouth.

  He looked shocked and hurt, and somewhere under all the pain I was sorry for it, but not sorry enough to let him take me from Gabriel.

  “No,” I repeated. “Just leave me with him.”

  “Come on, Samiel,” Beezle said softly.

  They went away, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to be alone with Gabriel. I crawled through the snow to him and laid my head on his back. I hardly felt the cold and the wet through my jeans.

  He was still warm. His coat smelled of him, apple pie baking in the oven. Tears leaked from my eyes.

  “Madeline,” a voice growled, and there was a gentle hand in my hair. Someone crouched beside me, someone who smelled of wolf.

  “Go away,” I said. “Just leave me here.”

  “Madeline,” Jude repeated. “You can’t stay here in the snow.”

  “Why not?” I said.

  I had seen an incomprehensible amount of death in my life. I had fought against Death with all the power I had within me, and still it had triumphed. It had
taken the only person who made me want to keep living.

  “Gabriel would not want to see you this way,” Jude said.

  “Don’t tell me what Gabriel would want or not want,” I said furiously, raising my head to glare at him. “Gabriel’s not here, and you didn’t know him.”

  “That’s the Madeline Black I know,” Jude said. “Stand up. Stand up and fight. If you stay here, you will fall into grief that you will never overcome.”

  “I don’t care,” I said, the fire that had lit me momentarily going out. “I want him back. I want to be where he is.”

  “I know,” Judas said.

  The pain in his voice drew me back from the darkness that threatened to swallow me, a pain so old and so familiar to him that he hardly knew he carried it most of the time.

  I came to my knees, my hands on my thighs, staring at Jude. His blue eyes shimmered with unshed tears in the streetlights.

  “Samiel needs you,” he said. “And your gargoyle.”

  “Yes,” I said. It was hard to keep my head above the blackness that rose up inside, the blackness that tried to pull me under again.

  “And you have a promise to keep, Lucifer’s child,” Jude said, but there was a gentleness that had never been there before.

  “Azazel,” I said, and inside me a shard of ice pierced the darkness.

  “Azazel,” Jude agreed.

  He held his hand out to me, and I took it, and we rose together. He gripped my fingers urgently.

  “From this day henceforth, I am your ally. When you hunt for Azazel I will be by your side, and I will hold him to the ground as you swing the sword to take his life.”

  “Jude,” I said uncertainly, looking at Wade, who looked unsurprised by this proclamation. The ways of the alpha are certainly mysterious.

  “I swear,” he said, and energy passed between our hands. I knew then that we were bound in some magical way, and that Jude would keep his promise no matter what the cost.

  “Let us take Gabriel’s body,” Wade said.

  I looked down at the ground in panic. They couldn’t take him. I wasn’t ready to say good-bye.

  “You cannot bury him here, not without attracting the attention of the authorities. We will take him to a place near where our pack summers. No one will find him there,” Wade said.

  He lay in the snow, facedown, with the dark stain around him, and this would be the last time I saw him.

  But I knew Jude was right. I couldn’t lie in the snow beside him forever. I had promises to keep.

  “Okay,” I said.

  I knelt beside him for the last time, and Jude and Wade helped me roll Gabriel to his back. I tenderly wiped the snow from his face with my sleeve and closed his eyes.

  For the last time, I pressed my lips against his, and then I let them take him away.

  I stood and watched Jude and Wade disappear into the alley with the body of my husband. I was still standing there, staring at the place they’d gone, when J.B. returned.

  He landed a few feet away from me. We watched each other without speaking for a few moments.

  “Did you know?” I asked.

  “Maddy, I’m so sorry…” he began.

  “Did you know?” I repeated. “You’re the regional supervisor. Every fated death in this city goes across your desk. Did you know that this was going to happen?”

  He stared at me for a minute, then finally said, “Yes.”

  It was like the blow had come down all over again, and for a few seconds I couldn’t breathe.

  “How could you?” I shouted. “How could you not say anything, not do anything? You knew that Gabriel would die on this night, in my own backyard, and you stood by and let it happen?”

  “You know the rules as well as I do,” J.B. said angrily. “We are duty bound not to interfere, no matter what the circumstances. What could you have done if I told you?”

  “I wouldn’t have let Gabriel go through that thrice-bedamned portal first!” I screamed. “I would have gone through myself.”

  “And left him grieving for you the way you’re grieving for him? Is that really a better option? Besides, there is nothing I can do once it was written down. You should know that better than anyone.”

  “Always duty. Always Death,” I said, throwing Amarantha’s words back at him.

  J.B.’s jaw tightened. “You should be grateful to me. I volunteered to take this one personally. Otherwise somebody else would have offered him the choice.”

  “He didn’t need a choice!” I screamed. Everything that was holding me together was unraveling again. “He was supposed to stay with me! You shouldn’t have taken him to the Door at all!”

  “Maddy,” J.B. said, his face shocked. “You can’t mean that. Every soul has the right to a choice.”

  “He should have stayed with me,” I said, and my voice cracked. “He should have chosen me.”

  J.B. closed the space between us, put his arms around me. All I could think was that there was something not quite right about his embrace. He wasn’t Gabriel.

  After a few moments I pushed away. “Go home, J.B.”

  “So that’s it?” he said. “After everything we’ve been through this week, all I get is a ‘go home, J.B.’?”

  “I’m sorry I’m ungrateful,” I said dully. Ice was closing in on my heart, covering that beating sunstone, making it numb. “I’m sorry I killed your mother, and destroyed your family home. I’m sorry I made you risk your life in a fruitless venture in Azazel’s court that gained us nothing. I’m sorry.”

  “Wade is going to bring the cubs in tomorrow,” J.B. said. “Will you be there?”

  “Don’t count on me,” I said, and turned away.

  He said nothing else. After a few moments I looked back. He was gone, and I was alone with a dark stain in the snow.

  I went to bed, but I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t. The sheets smelled of Gabriel. His clothes were hanging in the closet. His spare dress shoes were underneath the chair in the hallway. There were two coffee cups drying in the dish rack.

  I lay awake in bed, staring at the ceiling. I wanted to cry. Crying would be a release. But all I could think of was ice, and revenge.

  When the sun came up Beezle appeared in the doorway. He hovered there, tentative, unsure of his welcome.

  “J.B. called this morning,” Beezle said. “He said that Wade was bringing the cubs into the Agency.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said. I rolled to one side so that I wouldn’t have to see Beezle.

  “Don’t you want to see if Chloe’s spell will restore their memories?” Beezle asked. “You were the one who found the cubs. You were the one who thought to bring the machines back. Without you, there would be no way to cure them.”

  “Yeah,” I said. It was hard to remember why I had cared so much, why I had fought so hard for everything.

  There was a flutter of wings and then I felt Beezle’s hands yanking me roughly to face him.

  “Get up, Maddy,” Beezle said, and he smacked my cheek with his little hand.

  I covered the place where he had hit, shocked.

  “This is not you. You don’t lie down and go to sleep. You get up and fight.”

  “That’s what Jude said, too.”

  “Well, if that redneck werewolf can recognize it, then it must be true.”

  I laughed involuntarily at his categorization of Jude as a “redneck werewolf”; then I stopped. It didn’t seem right to laugh.

  Beezle looked at me tenderly. All the love that had bound us together for all the years of my life was there in his face. “Life goes on, Maddy. You know that better than anyone. It might be a cliché, but it’s true. You’re still alive. And Gabriel is alive inside you.”

  My cell phone rang. I looked at the caller ID. It was Jude, and I knew what he would want from me.

  I clicked on and without saying hello I said, “I’ll be there.”

  “I knew you would,” he growled.

  * * *

  Since there were so ma
ny cubs, we couldn’t meet in Chloe’s underground laboratory. J.B. made special arrangements for Wade, Jude, and the mothers of all of the children to enter the Agency through the loading dock. They still had to be checked by security, though. No one was taking chances.

  I waited outside the large conference room where Chloe had arranged all of the machines in a long row. When the pack came trooping down the hall I caught my breath. I didn’t know what to say to these women, to these mothers.

  I didn’t know how to tell them how sorry I was that it was my father, my kin, who had torn their children’s minds away from them and left them broken.

  I didn’t know how to tell them that this might not work, despite the fact that progress with the restored adults had been positive. Children’s brains were different. They were still developing. There could be permanent damage, even if Chloe did manage to restore their memories.

  I felt the weight of all my failings crushing me as Wade strode up to me. He held hands with a formidable-looking African American woman who wore a denim vest over jeans and a flannel shirt, much like her husband. In her arms I recognized the small toddler I’d carried through the caves—their daughter.

  “Madeline Black, this is my wife, Roxie Wade. Roxie, this is Madeline Black.”

  I held my hand out to her, unsure if she would take it.

  Her face crumpled suddenly and she threw her arm around me. The toddler was crushed between us as Roxie sobbed into my shoulder. I looked at Wade in panic.

  He gently extracted their daughter from between the two of us. Roxie put her other arm around me and tried to speak through her tears.

  “Th-th-th-thank…you…so…much,” she managed. “Thank you for bringing my baby back to me.”

  “Uh. Of course,” I said. I didn’t know what to do with this woman. She shouldn’t be thanking me. She should be hitting me for bringing her daughter back in such a state.

  Chloe peeked her head out of the room. “I’m ready.”

  I patted Roxie’s back awkwardly. “Ma’am? Mrs. Wade? They’re ready for us now.”