Black Howl bw-3

by Christina Henry

  Samiel tapped me on the shoulder. Would the invisibility spell make a difference?

  “Not with Azazel,” Gabriel said. “It may protect us from any lesser demons.”

  “Don’t bother,” I said. “I’m sure that Azazel will know that we’ve entered the building.”

  “Yeah, what with the smashing and the mangling that usually follows in your wake,” Beezle said.

  We walked slowly over the lawn. I limped, leaning on Gabriel. The wolves trotted ahead, sniffing the air. I was exhausted down to my bones. The house seemed like a giant repository of menace, and I was suddenly afraid for all of us.

  J.B. and Samiel flew ahead to check inside the broken windows. Samiel looked back and gave us a thumbs-up.

  The bottom sills of the windows were only a few feet off the ground, so the wolves were able to leap through easily. Gabriel lifted me inside, as my wings had disappeared along with my magic.

  The throne room was completely destroyed. The fires had been extinguished, but there was a lot of scorched and charred wood everywhere. Three-quarters of the ceiling plaster had come down completely, and the remainder looked like it was going to fall any minute. Bodies of demons and soldier-angels lay everywhere under the rubble. There was nothing stirring, and no sign of Azazel, Antares or Focalor.

  “Do you think Nathaniel was smashed underneath the falling ceiling?” I asked hopefully.

  “Nah, he’s a cockroach like Antares,” Beezle said. “And like you, come to think of it. Everyone tries to kill you but you keep popping back up.”

  “Real nice, Beezle. I’ll remember that the next time you’re crying for a doughnut,” I said.

  “Perhaps the two of you would like to cease your bickering until we manage to get out of mortal peril?” Gabriel asked.

  We picked our way over the debris until we reached the doors at the back of the throne room.

  “This way,” Gabriel said, and led us through into a hallway. A number of other doors opened off the hall, and at the end of it was a wide staircase.

  Everything was silent and still. I’d expected more activity—that Azazel would be gathering troops and making plans to destroy us. But there was no noise behind all of the doors that we passed, and there was no movement in the hall.

  Gabriel still had his arm slung around me, propping me up. I was so tired I could barely lift my feet. Beezle made a concession to my extreme exhaustion by letting Samiel carry him instead. The wolves scouted ahead. J.B. and Samiel brought up the rear.

  Wade and Jude stopped at the bottom of the stairs and waited for us to catch up. I looked up the flight, and then at Gabriel, and saw that he was thinking what I was thinking.

  If we got caught on the stairs, we were dead.

  “I had better carry you,” he said.

  He put his arms under my shoulders and knees and held me like a baby. It was pretty much impossible to piggyback on an angel. The wings get in the way.

  The wolves bounded up quickly, lightly, skipping steps. Gabriel extended his wings as far as he could and flew, carrying me with him. Behind us J.B. and Samiel followed suit.

  We landed at the top and faced another long hallway with doors leading off it.

  “This is just like Amarantha’s castle,” I muttered. “What does he need all these rooms for?”

  “His projects,” Gabriel said. He put me down. The hallway was too narrow for him to carry me.

  “What projects?” I asked.

  “I was never told,” Gabriel said. “I was a thrall. But I assume that at least one of the projects was the creation of the memory-extraction technology.”

  I stared at the doors, sorely tempted.

  “No,” said J.B. “We don’t have time.”

  “Gods know what he’s got behind there,” I pleaded. “We could destroy his research, stop him from unleashing some other horrible thing on the general population.”

  “We don’t have time,” J.B. repeated. “I’d like to go home to my cat tonight.”

  “I didn’t know you had a cat,” I said.

  “There are a lot of things you don’t know about me,” J.B. muttered.

  He was right. It seemed that whenever we talked it was always about me—the problems I had, the family politics, the monsters trying to kill me.

  “I haven’t been a very good friend, have I?” I asked.

  “Why do you feel compelled to have a heart-to-heart when we are in danger of losing our lives at any moment?” Beezle snapped.

  “Because I’m human,” I said angrily. “And I’m trying to remember that I’m more than just some monster-killing machine.”

  The wolves stopped abruptly, whining, at the end of the passage.

  “Gods above and below,” I said. “What now?”

  I hurried forward as quickly as I could on my unresponsive legs. Gabriel cursed softly and ran after me, catching me just as my right ankle buckled and my leg folded underneath my body.

  I stared up the second flight of stairs. The wolves growled, their hackles raised.

  Two creatures stood on the steps, one behind the other. Both of them were more than seven feet tall, with the raw red skin of exposed muscle, wicked-looking claws and protruding fangs.

  I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  They were nephilim.

  18

  “MEAT,” THE FIRST ONE CROONED.

  My mind went blank with terror. I had no magic with which to fight these creatures. And the last time I’d faced a nephilim, I’d died. I’d managed to come back, but it was a traumatizing experience nonetheless.

  “Azazel loosed the nephilim?” Beezle said. “He’s totally lost it. He can’t control those monsters. No one can.”

  “Meeeeeeat,” the second one said.

  All of the nephilim had been locked up in the Forbidden Lands for centuries. The cages that bound them were magically enspelled so that when the nephilim touched the bars, they would be burned or shocked. The cages were just small enough that there was no place for the nephilim to go to find relief, no way to avoid the magic that bound the cage together. Essentially, the nephilim had been tortured for almost the entirety of their existence. It had made already cruel creatures even crueler, and rather single-minded.

  “Meeeat,” they said together.

  I pulled Lucifer’s sword from the scabbard.

  “Do not even think about attempting it,” Gabriel hissed. “Let Samiel and me manage them.”

  “I’m not helpless,” I said.

  “You are doing an excellent impression of it,” he replied.

  There was a clatter of leather and armor in the hall. I turned to see several soldier-angels filling the gap behind our party.

  “Now it doesn’t matter,” I said grimly.

  We were trapped at the end of the corridor with the nephilim above us and the soldiers behind us and only about ten or fifteen feet with which to maneuver. The tight quarters meant it would be difficult for Azazel’s troops to fight as well, but that wasn’t going to be much comfort when the nephilim tore our heads off.

  J.B. and Samiel engaged the soldiers. Spells shot everywhere in the hallway, bouncing off walls and doorknobs.

  Wade and Jude howled and bounded forward toward the nephilim. Gabriel cursed aloud and followed after them. I chased after him, alarmed. I knew that he didn’t want to throw spells that might accidentally harm the wolves, but what was he going to do without magic? Engage the nephilim in hand-to-hand combat?

  The wolves reached the first nephilim. Jude leapt for the monster’s neck, jaws open. The nephilim swatted him aside with one giant hand, but Jude seemed to expect this. He went boneless and twisted in midair, landing on his paws.

  Jude’s purpose had been to serve as a distraction for his alpha. Wade closed his fangs around the nephilim as the creature was absorbed with Jude. The nephilim screamed as Wade tore a giant chunk of flesh from its side.

  Gabriel reached the first nephilim and blasted it in the face with white fire. The monster lashed out with i
ts fists, blinded by the blast but not particularly hurt. Nephilim are very resilient, and every nephilim responds to the same magical spell differently. What is fatal to one can be nothing more than an itch to another.

  The white fire that represented Gabriel’s nephilim magic had barely harmed this one, but Gabriel was already ducking underneath its elbows to go after the second creature.

  Jude leapt into the fray again, latching onto the nephilim’s arm and clamping it between his jaws. The nephilim smashed him repeatedly against the wall to try to dislodge him, but the wolf held on.

  Wade sprung into the air, slashing the monster across the face with his claws. It felt like it was intruding on the functioning of a well-oiled machine, but I figured the sooner the nephilim were brought down, the better.

  “Wade!” I shouted.

  The alpha seemed to understand immediately. He squeezed between the nephilim’s leg and the wall and moved on to help Gabriel. Jude released the creature’s arm as I raised the sword high and plunged it into the nephilim’s chest.

  The monster screamed. Then, rather horribly, he just kind of…disintegrated. Blood and bone and muscle seemed to melt into long sticky strands that flowed over the steps and made my boots hard to lift. Jude whined and slipped around the mess to help Wade and Gabriel.

  Beezle landed on my shoulder. “That is disgusting. That’s even grosser than the spider goop.”

  “Like I needed you to rank the quality of monster fluid,” I said. I lifted my boots out of the muck and ran up the stairs as fast as I could, which was not very fast. The nephilim’s remains were hardening quickly and it was even more difficult to get through them as they changed consistency.

  “J.B. and Samiel aren’t getting a break back there,” Beezle said. “For every soldier they kill, Azazel sends three more.”

  I didn’t have to look to know that. I could tell by the unrelenting pitch of battle that things hadn’t eased up. “We’ve got to get rid of the other nephilim. Then we can help them.”

  I reached the top of the stairs. Gabriel, Jude and Wade had managed to back the second nephilim into the hallway. This one wielded some kind of magic that looked like purple paintballs, but wherever it splattered, the walls were cut through as if by lasers.

  “If that stuff touches any of them, it will take off their limbs,” I said to Beezle.

  Worse, the nephilim seemed entirely unfazed by either the attacks of the wolves or Gabriel’s spells. Gabriel’s shoulders were set in grim determination, and both the wolves panted from the effort, but they were getting nowhere.

  “I’ve got a plan,” Beezle said.

  “Really,” I said, looking for an opening.

  “Really,” Beezle insisted. He quickly outlined it to me.

  “If this works, you get all the doughnuts you want for the next month, no questions asked,” I said with a lightness I did not feel. Beezle was an old gargoyle, and the place I usually liked him to be was somewhere safe, away from battle.

  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.