Christina Henry: Black Howl

I threw my hands up. “I imply nothing. Just do whatever the hell you want.”

I stomped away, sick to death of men and their delicate sensitivities. Samiel followed, tapping me on the shoulder.

“What is it?” I asked, turning on him with a snarl.

Don’t take it out on me just because you’re pissed at Jude.

I ran my hands through my hair. “Okay, okay. Sorry.”

It’s okay. I just wanted to stay with you while you searched.

I glanced over at Gabriel, who seemed to be feeling around the other side of the clearing with his magic, and raised an eyebrow at Samiel. He looked guilty.

I don’t need a babysitter, I signed.

Maybe I do, he signed back.

I gave a short laugh at that. Stay with me if it makes you feel better.

It does.

Jude had taken off somewhere while I’d been talking to Samiel, and good riddance to him. I didn’t need him snorting at me and second-guessing everything I did while I tried to help him find his lost pack mates. Beezle, as expected, was already snoring up in the tree.

Samiel and I started at the center of the clearing. I moved clockwise in a circle and he moved counterclockwise in a slightly larger diameter, each of us carefully checking the ground for anything that would indicate who had sent the demons.

I sent out a little questing thread of power, trying to see if I might stumble upon anything that Gabriel missed. I’d been trying to practice the more subtle forms of magic, to not let my emotions dictate to my abilities. I was getting better at it, but I was still nowhere close to Gabriel’s mastery. Plus, I still didn’t know how to trace a tiny flare of power to its source the way Gabriel did. But if I found something, I could at least show it to him and let him follow it.

I was getting a little dizzy walking in circles, my gaze completely focused on the dirt under my feet, but I didn’t want to accidentally miss anything. That was when I noticed something.

I put one knee on the ground and leaned forward, trying to make out the shape that was pressed into the dirt. It was inside a demon’s footprint, and it wasn’t perfectly clear, but it seemed to be the shape of a small V on top of a circle.

“This looks like a demon’s sigil,” I said, getting excited. I looked up for Samiel.

I realized that Samiel and Gabriel were gone, too. Beezle snoozed away up on his branch.

I didn’t know whether to be worried or annoyed that both of them had disappeared without a word. The last time Gabriel had gone missing, he’d been taken captive by Samiel and traded to Focalor.

I didn’t think I had to worry about Samiel’s intentions anymore, but maybe some other creature had gotten both of them. Or maybe they had gone off following clues, so absorbed in their search that they didn’t think to notify me.

“And standing here speculating is not productive,” I muttered to myself. “Beezle!”

He kept rumbling away like a freight train, so I goosed him with my power. He came awake with a snort and a glare.

“What was that for?” he said, flying down to my shoulder.

“Samiel and Gabriel are gone,” I said.

“You woke me up for that?”

“Don’t you care that more than half our party is missing?”

“They’re probably just following leads, the way you asked them to,” he said, rolling his head and cracking his neck.

“Yeah, probably,” I said unconvincingly.

The forest seemed unnaturally quiet all of a sudden, as if all the little creatures had gone still in the presence of a predator. I stilled, too, listening for any sign of Gabriel or Samiel or Jude moving through the brush. Beezle stopped moving, finally catching on that something was wrong.

We waited a few minutes. His claws tightened on my shoulders. I tried to steady my breath, to control my galloping heart. Something was about to happen. I could feel it.

There was a sudden crash in the woods only a few feet from where we stood. I turned toward the sound, saw the flashes of light that indicated magic, heard the repeated percussion of flesh hitting flesh, followed by grunts of pain.

I started toward the noise, drawing the sword and holding it before me. The snake tattooed on my right palm wriggled underneath my glove like it recognized its former home. Beezle squeezed his claws in warning. “Wait. It could be a trick, or a trap.”

“It could also be Samiel or Gabriel getting the sense knocked out of them,” I said, and continued toward the sound anyway.

A second later Samiel and Gabriel appeared, Samiel looking proud, Gabriel grim. They each held the shoulder of an unconscious figure they dragged between them. Jude followed behind them, wiping his knuckles on his shirt.

The figure had white wings, and golden hair that covered his face, but I knew who he was even before they tossed him to the ground at my feet.

“Nathaniel,” I said. “What is he doing here?”

“LOOKS LIKE WE FOUND OUR CULPRIT,” JUDE SAID with a satisfied air. “Once he wakes up we can make him tell us where Wade is.”

I rubbed the bridge of my nose. This was a complication that I had not foreseen.

“Look, I’ll agree that it’s suspicious that he’s out here in the middle of nowhere at the same time as a demon attack, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s the mastermind behind it. There could be any number of reasons for his appearance.”

“Such as?” Jude challenged.

“I don’t know,” I said helplessly, looking at Gabriel and Samiel. Samiel shrugged.

“He could be here as an ambassador from Lord Azazel,” Gabriel said slowly. “Nathaniel is often sent on such missions for both Lord Azazel and Lord Lucifer. He is a trusted emissary.”

“Then why was he sneaking through the woods, trying not be detected?” Jude said. “I followed him for a good distance and he was clearly trying not to make noise.”

“Just because he was trying to be circumspect doesn’t mean that his actions are suspicious,” I said.

“Just because he is your fiancé doesn’t mean that he is above suspicion,” Jude snapped back. “If anything, his ties to Lucifer make him less credible in my eyes.”

“You’re letting your prejudice blind you. And Nathaniel is not my fiancé,” I shouted.

I wondered why I was trying to defend Nathaniel. He had assaulted me in Amarantha’s castle. Even though he had been under the influence of a spell at the time, I still suspected that the seed of jealousy had always been there, and that the spell had only magnified thoughts and impulses that he had buried deep within.

I did not like him, I did not trust him and I certainly didn’t want to be married to him. But I also did not want to make assumptions, to miss out on finding the real culprits because we were distracted by Nathaniel.

The subject of this heated conversation groaned, and we all looked down. Nathaniel opened his ice-blue eyes, saw himself surrounded by a bunch of hostile stares, and seemed to calculate in an instant the correct course of action. He held his hands up above his shoulders while still lying prone on the ground, and made no move to sit up.

“What are you doing here, Nathaniel?” I asked.

“Why ask him? He’s just going to lie. It’s the way of his kind,” Jude said.

“Shut up, Jude,” I said, and looked at Nathaniel expectantly.

He glanced again at Jude, at Samiel, at Gabriel. “May I speak with you alone, Madeline?”

“No,” Gabriel, Jude and Beezle replied, and Samiel shook his head angrily.

I could have told the four of them that I was quite capable of handling Nathaniel. When he had attacked me I’d blasted a hole in him that had taken weeks to heal. But it didn’t seem to be the time to engage in another pointless argument. We had enough of those going around.