Christina Henry - Black Howl

“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.”