“Wake me when we get there,” he said.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Is this cutting into your naptime?” I said.
“I already missed my snack time,” he grumbled. “I’m not missing my nap, too.”
I stepped into the portal, felt the familiar squeeze of air pressure, fought the nausea that rose with it.
And emerged a few minutes later in a tumble. No one was there to catch me. They were all facing away from the portal.
I stood up, grumbling, and dusted myself off. “So much for chivalry. What are you all staring…”
My voice trailed off. We were on the back lawn of Azazel’s mansion, just inside the shelter of the forest there, and hidden from the sight of anyone in the house.
It was the middle of the day, and the house buzzed with activity. I could see the shadows of many creatures passing to and fro behind the windows.
The lawn was covered in tents. Demons and fallen angels bustled back and forth carrying supplies. I smelled woodsmoke, and heard the ringing of metal on metal.
This was an army. Azazel’s army.
“I can’t believe he came back here,” I whispered.
“Doubtless he assumed it was safe. We have been here once before, and found him gone.”
“A smart rabbit knows how to circle back behind the wolf,” Jude said.
“He’s no rabbit,” I said, watching the tremendous amount of activity going on before us. “Is he planning on storming Lucifer’s residence?”
“Whatever he’s planning, we can’t let him do it,” Jude said. “Anyone who gets in Azazel’s way will be crushed.”
“But how will we stop an army with just the four of us?” Nathaniel said.
I stared hard at the orderly movements of the soldiers, thinking. Then I smiled.
“By causing chaos, of course.”
“This isn’t another stupid snowman plan, is it?” Beezle said from inside my coat.
“That plan worked,” I said, and explained what I was thinking. “Remember, the important thing is not to destroy the army. It’s to find the Agents, and neutralize Azazel.”
“I love it when you use euphemisms,” Beezle said.
“Just stay inside the coat,” I said. “On the count of three. One, two, three!”
Nathaniel, Samiel and I simultaneously blasted different sections of the lawn. Tents immediately caught fire, and there was a moment of confusion as everyone ran around trying to figure out what had happened and where the threat was coming from.
Jude ran up the center of the lawn, taking out demons whenever he encountered them. The rest of us followed, swords clashing and spells flying.
By the time we reached the side door of the mansion, almost all the tents were ablaze, and several soldiers lay dead behind us.
The door was open since so many soldiers and demons were coming and going from the house to the tent city. Several more soldiers were emerging in response to the cries for help from outside.
Samiel led the charge through the door, blasting whatever was in front of him. Nathaniel followed, and I came behind them, slashing with the sword. Jude galloped in behind me, blood on his muzzle.
Nathaniel and Samiel had engaged fighting the soldiers in the room, but I didn’t care about them. If we got caught here, we would be overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of Azazel’s men.
“Forget about them!” I shouted. “Keep going! Jude, can you sniff out Chloe?”
Jude barked and dashed through the room, pausing only to tear the throat out of a charcarion demon that made the mistake of getting in his way.
I expected Jude to lead us toward the top of the house and Azazel’s labs. After all, he already had cages ready for new prisoners there.
But instead Jude led us through a large kitchen I had never seen before. We shocked the hell out of one of Azazel’s soldiers making a sandwich. I slit his throat so he wouldn’t raise an alarm.
“Wow, that was cold,” Beezle said.
I felt a pang of regret. He hadn’t threatened me or mine, and maybe he didn’t deserve to die in a pool of his own blood while doing something as mundane as making a sandwich. For a moment I wondered where my humanity had gone.
Then I remembered that the soldier was willingly serving Azazel, and that innocents would die if we didn’t stop my father.
After that I decided I wouldn’t feel guilty about anything I had to do while I was in Azazel’s mansion. Or at least I would save my guilt for later, when it wouldn’t risk my life or my friends’ lives. Because I was sure that any of these soldiers would kill me without hesitating if Azazel said so.
Jude pushed through a swinging door at the far end of the kitchen and led us down a set of stone steps. The sound of running feet clattered on the floor above but nobody pursued us. They didn’t seem to have realized where we’d gone yet.
It got quieter and quieter as we descended, like we were falling into the heart of the earth.
“He’s leading us toward the cells,” Nathaniel whispered. “The ones that Azazel reserved for his worst offenders.”
“And they’re guarded by mute soldiers,” I remembered.
“Yes, so that they could never reveal what they may have overheard from the prisoners.”
“So Azazel could protect his own butt,” I said. “I’m sure that at least some of those prisoners were not offenders but people who’d discovered facts that Azazel would prefer to keep hidden.”
“You have so much disgust for him,” Nathaniel said, and something about the tone in his voice made me think this was the first time he’d really noticed.
“Of course I do,” I said. “He’s killed innocents for his own purpose. He tried to use me, bend me to his will. He’s the kind of creature that would cut out the tongues of his loyal soldiers just to make sure they’d never cross him. Of course I have disgust for him.”
“And so these feelings encompass your feelings toward me, as well,” he said. “Because I have long been associated with Azazel. Because I participated in acts which you find repugnant.”
“Well, yes,” I said, feeling flustered. “But you’ve done some good things, too.”
“But not enough to overcome my past,” Nathaniel said.
“This really isn’t the time to discuss this,” I said. I wanted to stay focused on the mission, not get distracted by the confusing feelings I had about Nathaniel.
“Very well,” he said, and fell silent.
The stairs seemed to go on forever. Finally, we reached the bottom. A stone passage stretched away from us, set at intervals with candles encased in glass. The air was dry and smelled like rotten meat.
“Another tunnel,” Beezle observed.
“Another tunnel.” I sighed. “Stolen from a Vincent Price movie, no less.”
It was wide enough that Samiel, Nathaniel and I could walk comfortably abreast. Jude trotted ahead, his nose to the ground. He seemed to be working harder now to follow Chloe’s scent. The rotten-meat smell was getting stronger.
The passage came to a T-junction, and we all looked expectantly at Jude. He went down each side of the junction a little ways, circling and coming back over the same ground a few times. He looked up at me and whined.
“You can’t tell which way she’s gone?” I asked.
He barked in reply.
I looked down each passage. Nothing seemed to distinguish these stone tunnels from the one we’d just come through.
“Maybe we should…” I began.
Don’t you dare say that we should split up, Samiel said.
“It would be more efficient,” I pointed out.
“We are not dividing the group,” Nathaniel said.
I heaved a sigh. They were both right. Dividing our forces was not a good idea. I’d seen enough horror movies to know that.
“What do you think?” I asked Beezle, who was peering down each passage with interest.
He clapped his claws over his eyes and pointed with his other hand. “Eenie-meenie-minie-moe. That way.”
He pointed right.
Nathaniel raised an eyebrow at me.
“We don’t have anything better to go on,” I said. “Maybe Jude will pick up something as we go farther along.”
After several moments the rotting smell intensified to the point where my eyes were watering. I pulled the neck of my sweater over my mouth and nose. Beezle hid inside my coat with his claws over his mouth, breathing shallowly. Nathaniel coughed every few minutes in a way that told me he was trying to keep from heaving.
Jude, especially, looked miserable. I think the stench was starting to dull his sense of smell.
We all suspected what was causing the smell, but nobody wanted to say it out loud.
The passage came to an abrupt end at a wooden door. There was no lock, key or doorknob, and no window to see what was behind it.
I touched my hand to the door, and it swung open. A blast of stinking air hit me in the face, and I turned away, gagging.
I wished I’d never seen what was behind the door.
The room was long and narrow, and there was another doorway at the far end. Bodies were everywhere in between, tossed like dirty laundry. Most of the bodies were not intact. There were arms and legs, fingers and ears, random bits that used to be people. No matter where I looked I saw exposed bone and ragged flesh.
“Azazel’s been feeding the nephilim,” Beezle said quietly.
“There’s no point in going in,” I said, reaching to close the door.
Jude sniffed the ground outside the door and barked, pointing his nose inside the room.
“She’s in there?” I asked in dread. I did not want to search through the piles of corpses looking for Chloe.
Jude ran into the room and stopped at the far door. He barked again and disappeared through the doorway.
“I thought we didn’t want to divide our forces,” I mumbled as we jogged after him.
The next room was about the same size and shape as the previous one, but it was empty. There were copper-red stains on the stone floor.
Jude had already gone ahead to the next room. I heard him bark, and the sound of a sword clashing against stone.
I ran ahead and through the doorway, my own sword drawn. I needn’t have worried. Jude had already killed the soldier there and left him on the ground. The wolf turned around, his face covered in blood, his tongue hanging out in a macabre doggy grin.
This room was much like the others, except that each side was stacked floor-to-ceiling with cages. And inside the cages were the missing Agents. They all appeared to be sleeping.
Samiel was already running to Chloe, whose vivid purple hair practically glowed in the gloom. He tore the cage door off its hinges and lifted her out. A second later I was at his side, feeling for her pulse.
Her heart was still beating. On her neck were two puncture wounds. I opened her mouth with my fingers to make sure that she hadn’t been turned, and was relieved to see ordinary human canines.
Jude had transformed back into a human and was opening the other cages. Nathaniel lifted the sleeping Agents out and placed them on the floor while I checked to see if they all still lived. I also checked to see if they were all still human.
Two of them had the sharp, pointy canines of a vampire.
“Better take care of them now,” Beezle said.
“How can I do that?” I said. “They’re no threat to me.”
“They were turned by vampires working with Azazel,” Beezle said. “If you leave them, it will be two more soldiers you’ll have to kill later.”
I knew that what Beezle was saying was right, but it didn’t make it any easier. These were my colleagues, people I’d worked with at the Agency. They had been kidnapped, likely tortured, and turned against their will.
Killing them didn’t seem like the preventive medicine that Beezle made it out to be. It seemed like murder.
“I’ll do it,” Nathaniel said, holding his hand out for my sword. His eyes were very grave.
I shook my head. “No. I should do it.”
As I brought the sword down to their necks one by one, I wondered whether their deaths had been foreseen, and if so, where were their Agents?
I saw their souls emerge, but no Agent appeared to take them to the Door. They both looked at me expectantly, one man and one woman, both about my age. I thought the man’s name was James and that his cubicle was on my floor, but I wasn’t certain.
“I can take you to the Door,” I said, “but I have some things to do first.”
“Whoa, Madeline Black is here for us?” James asked. He seemed impressed for a moment; then he looked down at my right hand. “Wait—you killed us?”
I’d forgotten I was holding the bloody sword. “You were turning into vampires.”
“And you killed us even though we’d done you no harm?” the woman said. “No wonder you have such a bad reputation.”
“Look,” I said. “I’m sorry I killed you, but it was pretty likely you would have died in this war Azazel is about to wage. If you’ll come with us, I’ll take you to the Door once we get the other Agents out of here safely.”
“I don’t want to go with you,” the woman said. “I’m an Agent. I can take my own self to the door.”
“Yeah, I think I can handle it,” James said.
They both broke free of their ectoplasmic cords without my assistance, and floated upward through the ceiling.
“Well, that’s just great,” I said, kicking James’ body. “I’m sure the Agency is going to harass me for allowing their souls to escape.”
“I thought we’d agreed that the Agency was going to harass you no matter what you do,” Beezle said. “The bigger problem is this—how are we going to get fourteen sleeping Agents out of here?”
“Wake them up?”
Jude shook his head. “I already tried. It’s like they’re sedated.”
“And I’m sure we can’t do something easy, like make a portal out of here,” I said to Nathaniel.
“Not as long as we are on Azazel’s property,” he said.
“We can’t call J.B. for help, because the Agency people are being jerkwads,” I said, ticking off points on my fingers. “Lucifer is conveniently out of touch again. We can’t make a portal. What can we do?”
We all stared helplessly at one another.
“I can’t believe it’s come to this,” I said angrily. “We’ve found the Agents but we can’t get them home?”
“It’s only a matter of time before Azazel sends someone down here to see where we’ve gone,” Nathaniel said. “And I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to go back upstairs through the army.”
“I agree,” I said, and then stopped.
Something was coming. I could hear it moving slowly through the outer rooms. The ground trembled slightly as it approached.
“Meeeeat,” it crooned.
“Oh, no,” I said.
We could probably hold off the nephilim. We might even be able to kill it. But that would cause a lot of ruckus and attract the attention of Azazel and his army.
“Come on, think of something!” Beezle said, flying out of my coat and smacking the back of my head. “Where are your Morningstar superpowers?”
“I don’t know,” I said, looking at the tattoo on my hand. “It’s like those abilities have gone quiet since Lucifer disappeared.”
“You do not think the Morningstar is dead, do you?” Nathaniel asked.
“No,” I said. “But it’s like he’s a blank, like he’s gone under… ground…”
I looked down at the floor, and back up at Beezle.
“This is another snowman plan, isn’t it?”
“Meeeat,” the nephilim said, its voice louder as it approached.
“More like an earthworm plan,” I said. “Nathaniel, come help me. Samiel, you stand by the door and keep the nephilim from getting in here.”
I kneeled on the floor a little distance away from the sleeping Agents, my palms flat on the stone. Nathaniel joined me, l
ooking dubious.
“You want to blast a hole in the floor?” Beezle said. “That’s your plan? Haven’t we spent enough time in tunnels?”
“If we can dig a tunnel off Azazel’s property, then we can take a portal out of here,” I said. “And it’s a better option than trying to fight our way through the soldiers upstairs while protecting all the Agents.”
“We still have to transport them out of here,” Jude said.
“Yes, but we’ll have a good chance of keeping them safe underground. If we get them all down there, then we can move them in small groups, leapfrogging down the passage. And we easily pick off anyone who comes into the tunnel behind us.” I looked at Nathaniel. “Okay, let’s do it.”
I summoned all the strength and will that I had, and sent a blast of power through the floor and into the earth beneath. Nathaniel followed suit, and the floor buckled underneath us before the stones collapsed. I fell about ten feet into the hole, the breath leaving my body, brick dust raining down on my face. Nathaniel peered over the edge, bemused.
“I do not know how you do it,” he said. “How can one person be so clumsy?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, getting to my feet. I was damned lucky that I was part angel or else I was sure I’d have a broken bone. I gave my belly a little pat and felt the reassuring answer of beating wings.
“MEEEAT!” the nephilim cried, and I smelled nightfire burning. A moment later I heard the sound of something heavy knocking up against a solid wall.
“You’d better start digging, rabbit,” Beezle said, flying down to my side. “Samiel’s put up a shield, but the nephilim is making so much noise that it’s sure to bring the rest of the house down on us.”
“We have to get to the woods that are across the road from the front of the mansion,” I said. “That’s definitely off his property. If we go behind the house, we’ll never get out. Gabriel told me that Azazel’s woods stretch on for miles in that direction.”
Beezle frowned at the packed earth, spinning around in all directions. He stopped moving after a moment and pointed.
“That way.”
“Are you sure?” I asked. “Because we really can’t afford to mess this up.”
“Trust me,” Beezle said. “Do you think I would put future doughnut deliveries at risk?”
Black Lament Page 21
