“I am,” I said, and then I shivered a little as magic shimmered in the air.
Wade grinned, showing a row of white, white teeth. “Then the wolves are also friends to you, Madeline Black. Tell me, what interest have you in finding the wolf-killer?”
I hesitated. Wade seemed to know a lot about fallen angels, but I was certain that Samiel’s existence was a closely kept secret. And as Beezle had pointed out, there was no way to be sure that Samiel was killing them. Even if I was a true friend of the wolves, there was no need to make them privy to every shadow in Lucifer’s kingdom.
“I came upon the first murder site by accident after feeling a magical pulse in the area,” I said. I felt it was important to tell the truth as much as possible, since Wade seemed to be able to tell when a person lied. “We followed the trail of magic to the body. I was . . . horrified by the murder, and wanted to find out who killed the wolf, but we were unable to discover anything concrete.”
“And today?”
“I was grocery shopping at Jewel when the same thing happened.”
Wade sniffed the air. I felt tense. I needed the wolf to believe me. I already had enough magical conflicts in my life without arousing the ire of a pack of werewolves.
“Very well,” he said, and some of the tension drained out of me. “We would appreciate the assistance of Lucifer’s granddaughter in this matter.”
“How is it that you know Lucifer?” I said curiously.
“I have met with him before, as a representative of my people in negotiations with the fallen,” he said, and grinned. “The werewolves of Wisconsin are sworn enemies of Lucifer. I am sure your great-grandfather will be happy to hear that you have reestablished good relations.”
I felt the blood drain from my face. I’d just stepped in it, again.
“Never, ever play chess with a master, Maddy,” Beezle mumbled from inside his coat.
Forget chess. I was still playing Candy Land.
A little while later we parted ways from my new pals, having discovered nothing especially helpful. Wade, Jude and the third wolf, whose name was James, had sniffed around the site and said that angels had been present, but also something that they could not identify. I’d carefully avoided Gabriel’s glance when the men said that. There was no need to share any information about Ramuell or Samiel with the pack.
The three wolves gathered up the remains of their pack member in a black plastic garbage bag. I valiantly suppressed the urge to boot as they scooped completely unidentifiable bits of flesh and bone into the sack. Jude glared sullenly at Gabriel and myself all the while, like he would follow his alpha’s orders but was reserving judgment on us. James tracked me constantly with his disconcerting gaze. Obviously the other two wolves did not share Wade’s assessment of me.
As they departed, Wade called out, “We will meet again, Madeline Black. En Taro Adun!”
“What the hell does that mean?” I muttered to Beezle.
“Do I look like some kind of dog translator?” he snapped. He was feeling cranky because he’d missed out on doughnuts—I’d dropped the basket at Jewel—and he’d also missed his usual morning nap in his perch.
“No,” I said vaguely. “It doesn’t sound like werewolf language.”
“And what would you know about werewolf language?” Beezle grumbled.
I ignored his jibe. Normally I enjoyed sparring with Beezle when he was grumpy, but I was worried about what Lucifer would say when he discovered that I had reestablished relations with the werewolves of Wisconsin. Would he be pleased? Would he be furious? I couldn’t care less if he was pleased, since getting Lucifer’s approval was not high on my to-do list. But I really didn’t want him angry with me. I had enough problems without being in the soup with the Prince of Darkness.
Gabriel had tried to warn me. I’d seen the little shake of the head, telling me not to do what I was about to do. But I had done it anyway. I understood that I didn’t know my way around this world yet, and that I needed guidance. But it chafed when I felt like someone else was always making my decisions for me.
“Of course, decisions don’t seem to be my best thing,” I muttered to myself.
“What? What?” Beezle shouted. “You’ll have to speak up. I’m an old gargoyle and I’m feeling faint from lack of nourishment.”
“Oh, for crying out loud,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Gabriel, let’s take this baby home so that he can eat.”
“Popcorn!” Beezle said.
“We’ll see,” I replied, moving toward the place where the alley emptied back out to Nelson. I glanced behind me to see if Gabriel was following, and then stopped.
Gabriel wasn’t there.
5
“GABRIEL?” I CALLED. MAYBE HE WAS JUST OUT OF sight, around the corner of the T-junction. “Gabriel, where are you?”
“That fool probably got distracted by something and wandered away. The two of you seem to think you’re investigators,” Beezle muttered. “He might have found a clue.”
“He would have told me,” I said, jogging down the length of the alley to the junction and looking down. He wasn’t there.
“Maybe he followed the wolves,” Beezle said. His tone said that he was supremely unconcerned with Gabriel’s whereabouts.
“He would have told me,” I repeated, starting to get angry. “He wouldn’t leave me, not for a second. He’s still feeling guilty for not being there when Antares attacked. And Azazel would have Gabriel’s head on a shelf if he walked away from me and I got hurt.”
I ran down the alley in the other direction, toward Belmont, calling Gabriel’s name. How could he just disappear into thin air like that? We’d been standing there with the wolves. If something had happened to Gabriel, one of us should have noticed.
“He wouldn’t leave me,” I repeated, as I ran around the block, my head twisting this way and that. “Gabriel! Gabriel!”
I must have appeared a little unhinged because a couple of new moms walking their babies in the winter sunshine pulled their $800 Bugaboos out of my way as I went by.
“You’re frightening the natives,” Beezle said.
I stopped and glared down at him as I came back to the mouth of the alley. “Maybe they’re scared of the ugly little monster hanging out of my coat.”
Beezle looked affronted. “I’ll have you know I am a very handsome gargoyle.”
“According to wh—” I said, and then the breath was ripped from my body as something very large and very heavy crashed into me.
My attacker and I careened into the alley and smashed into a metal Dumpster. I cried out in pain as a protruding piece of metal pierced through my coat and into my back. Hot blood ran down my spine as I was punched in the face again and again by a heavy fist and I was nearly blinded by pain.
I didn’t have time to think, to try to fight back. I had an impression of boundless strength holding me down, muscled bare arms, hot breath panting, mad green eyes . . . and wings. White feathers fell all around us as I tried to push with my hands, kick with my legs, to snap with my teeth, anything. But I could barely see; I could hardly breathe. Blood ran into my eyes as I was hit again and again without pause.
I tried to think, tried to focus my magic. I had to get this monster off me before he beat me to death. My magic flickered, then roared to life inside me. I didn’t have the time or the inclination to focus it into something like nightfire. I just let the magic move through me, up and out, and have its own way.
There was an explosion of power that sucked the breath from my lungs, a burst of dazzling light like a firework. My attacker was thrown from my body and away like a cannonball, shooting through the air and out of sight. I tried to get a good look at him, but my eyes were stinging from blood and sweat and I had no clearer impression than before.
I felt like someone had pounded me all over with a meat mallet, especially my face. I shifted my jaw and to my horror felt a couple of loosened teeth on the left side in the place where I had been hit repeatedly.
I rolled to my side, slowly and painfully, and coughed out some blood.
“Fantastic,” I muttered. “This day just can’t get any better.”
Then I remembered that Beezle had been in my pocket. I patted the place where I normally carried him and felt nothing but wool and lint. “Oh, gods. Beezle.”
I forced myself to sit up, although as soon as I did I felt dizzy. I tried to focus my bleary eyes around the alley and found that I could see if I held my sleeve to my bleeding forehead. There was a small gray lump a few feet away from me, and it looked like Beezle, and it looked like he was breathing.
“Coming to getcha, Beezle,” I said, and flopped over to my belly. Walking was absolutely out of the question, so I crawled to him, pulling my legs (which did not want to bend or function in any normal way) behind me like a slug as I heaved forward on my elbows.
My face throbbed with pain as I reached Beezle. I picked him up with one hand and lightly patted his cheek with the other.
“Beezle, come on, wake up,” I said, breathing shallowly. Everything hurt, and I didn’t know if my attacker would come back. I had to get up, get away, but vigorous movement did not appear to be in my future.
Beezle’s eyelids fluttered, and he sat up in my palm, rubbing a bump on his head with one clawed hand.
“What happened? Did we get hit by a tractor trailer?”
I kissed his forehead. Beezle might be a grumpy pain in the ass most of the time, but he was my grumpy pain in the ass and I loved him.
“I think,” I said, remembering mad green eyes, “that we got hit by Samiel.”
“Samiel, huh?” Beezle said, and he seemed to focus on my face for the first time. “When you make an enemy, Maddy, you do it right. You look like you got pounded in the face by a hammer.”
I shuddered to think what I looked like. I never thought I was a great beauty to begin with, but I was sure that getting punched numerous times wasn’t going to do anything for my dating life. I pillowed my head on my arms and breathed through my mouth. It hurt to move. It hurt to think.
I must have zoned out for a few minutes, because the next thing I knew, Beezle was hovering just above my ear.
“Earth to Maddy! You are lying in the middle of an alley and could get run over at any second,” he shouted.
I rolled over to my back and whimpered. “I’m not sure getting run over at this point would make that much of a difference.”
“Why haven’t any cars come through this alley, though?” Beezle said thoughtfully. “We’ve been here for a while, finding werewolf bits and getting beaten up.”
I knew that Beezle was saying something important, but I couldn’t quite grasp the thread of it. It was weird that nobody had entered the alley, or seen me getting the crap pounded out of me. It was weird that nobody had seen the werewolf getting killed, or called the police when a bunch of suspicious characters had hung around the murder scene for a while in the middle of a weekday morning. This was important. I had to remember it so I could think about it later, when I didn’t have forty anvils pressing on my brain.
But first I had to get up and get some medical help. Medical help. I felt around inside my jacket and found my cell phone, still intact. I kept a couple of throwaway cells on hand at home since I often lost phones when flying through the air, and I’d just lost one.
I managed to keep it together long enough to call an Agent Medi-Team and give them my location, and then I closed my eyes and went to sleep for a while.
My last thought before I conked out was of Gabriel. Where was he?
I woke to darkness in my own bed, and there was a figure snoozing in a kitchen chair beside me. For a moment my heart leapt, thinking it was Gabriel. Then a shaft of light came through the window and I saw that it was J.B.
I cautiously raised myself from the bed. I still felt sore all over. There was a large patch of gauze taped to my back where I had been cut by the Dumpster. A matching bandage was wrapped around my forehead. My fingers touched my cheek and I moaned in pain. My whole face felt puffy and tender, and the rest of me didn’t feel that great, either.
J.B. shifted in the chair and opened his eyes blearily. “I’m not sure you should be sitting up in your condition. In fact, I’m not sure that you should be breathing in your condition.”
I slumped back against the headboard, exhausted from the effort of sitting up and taking stock of my injuries. “Is it that bad?”
He rubbed his eyes. “You’ve looked better. Like when you’ve come to work without showering and still wearing your house slippers.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “You are the soul of tact, J.B. No wonder all the women want you. What are you doing here, anyway?”
“Your gratitude is overwhelming, Black. I arrived with the Medi-Team and brought you home when they were done repairing you.”
“This is repaired?” I said.
“Well, they can’t do that magical healing thing that your guard dog can, but they patched you up as best they could. Where is your shadow, anyway?” J.B. asked.
I felt a pang in my chest when I thought of Gabriel. “He’s gone.”
“Gone, how?”
I explained about the body we’d found in the alley, and how Gabriel had disappeared without a trace a few moments before I’d been attacked.
“Do you think his disappearance had something to do with your attack?” J.B. asked.
“I suppose it could,” I said slowly. “But it could also have something to do with the wolves. Or with Antares, for that matter.”
And when I thought about it, Antares seemed a likely suspect. He had a whole host of magical tricks up his sleeve, and disappearing acts were a favorite of his.
“Are you saying that Antares is working with Samiel?” J.B. asked. “Isn’t it enough that you’ve got enemies coming out of every nook and cranny? Do they have to be conspiring against you as well?”
“I didn’t say they were conspiring. Antares may have taken Gabriel as part of some nefarious plot of his own and Samiel just happened to show up a few minutes later.”
“I don’t know,” J.B. said doubtfully. “Coincidence sounds even more unlikely than conspiracy.”
“Well, you figure it out, then. I’m feeling a little worn-out right now.”
“No need to get cranky with me, Black.”
“Oh, gee, why would I feel cranky, Bennett? It wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that I nearly got beaten to death a few hours ago, would it?”
J.B. sobered. “Yes, but why?”
“Why did I get beaten up? Because I killed Samiel’s father, that’s why.”
“No, why did he beat you? Why didn’t he use magic?”
Once J.B. said it, I realized that it was completely bizarre that Samiel had used such a mortal method of exacting vengeance. Ramuell had possessed magical abilities that had been terrifying in their execution, and Ariell had been an angelic being loaded with magic. Why had Samiel used his fists instead of his powers?
“Maybe he’s powerless, like Antares,” I said, although this seemed improbable. Completely powerless beings like my half brother were rare, especially when they came from such a notable magical lineage. Ramuell was Lucifer’s son, after all. It seemed unlikely that Samiel would have no magic.
J.B. shook his head. “It would definitely stretch credibility to think that not only are two of your enemies conspiring against you, but both of them have no magic of their own.”
“I’m not sure you are actually helping here,” I said crossly.
He held his hands up. “I’m just saying.”
“And I’m just saying that you’re not adding anything very much useful to the conversation.”
He looked as if he wanted to say something else, then paused and sighed. The moonlight reflected off the silver frames of his glasses. “No matter how hard I try, we always revert to our old patterns.”
That made me pause as well. “You’re right. I don’t know why we always end up bickering like this.
”
“Because you have unfulfilled sexual tension?” said Beezle, flapping into the room and landing on my lap. He put his hands on his hips—or what stood in for hips, anyway. It was hard to tell that he had hips anymore since his belly had started expanding.
“Hmm,” he said, eyeing my face critically. “It looks like you’ll probably regain use of your jaw sometime by Christmas.”
“I’m so glad that everyone is being positive and supportive in my time of need,” I said, glaring at my gargoyle.
“Hey, we aim to please,” Beezle said. “Now, what are we going to do about Gabriel?”
I shifted my hands restlessly on my lap. “I don’t know. I don’t even have a clue where to begin.”
“Well, if you are interested in my two cents . . .”
“Which usually turns into two dollars,” I said.
Beezle pressed his lips together briefly in annoyance and then continued on as if I hadn’t spoken. “I think you should start with the wolves. They were there on the scene and they had the motivation to take him.”
“What motivation would the wolves have? Their alpha had just stated that Maddy was a friend to them and vice versa. If they were truly interested in reestablishing relations with Lucifer, then why would they jeopardize that by taking Gabriel?” J.B. said reasonably.
“That’s assuming the wolves actually do want to treat with Lucifer, which I doubt,” Beezle said darkly. “Wolves generally keep a minimum of contact with the fallen.”
“Why are you always so suspicious of everyone’s motivations?” I said. “Maybe the wolves want to make peace and decided to take advantage of the opportunity.”
“ ‘Take advantage’ is the operative phrase here,” Beezle said. “You have to stop trusting everything you hear or the fallen will eat you alive.”
“And so will the faeries,” J.B. said. “Believe me, there’s nothing my mother loves more than turning naïveté to her advantage.”
I felt myself getting annoyed. Sure, I needed some help with interpersonal relationships, and I was astonishingly sheltered for a woman nearing her thirty-third birthday, but I wasn’t dumb. I didn’t appreciate being treated as such.
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