Christina Henry - Black Howl

“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.

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.