Black Howl (28 page)

Gabriel shook his head. “There is only one way that I know of to leave this place once Azazel has activated the security measures.”

“And that is?”

“There is Azazel’s personal portal.”

“And where is that?” I asked, dreading the answer.

“In Azazel’s quarters. The east wing, on the very top floor.”

“Well, that’s like asking to get caught,” Beezle said. “You want us to go back inside? Why do none of you pay attention when we watch horror movies?”

“Because it’s hard to hear the narrative when there’s a little gargoyle screaming, ‘Don’t go in there,’ at the actors,” I said.

“What narrative?” Beezle said. “It’s just people making stupid decisions and getting chopped up by a maniac. Like we’re going to be when we go back inside Azazel’s house and head straight for the only exit.”

“You know that he’ll expect us to try something like that,” J.B. agreed.

“Does anyone else have a better idea?” I demanded. “Or do you want to let Azazel run us ragged on the grounds until we can’t run any farther?”

No one answered. We all knew there was only one choice.

“Okay,” I said briskly, addressing Gabriel. “I’m assuming if that’s the only way out, then Azazel will have those windows on the upper floors well guarded.”

“That is a safe assumption, yes,” Gabriel said.

“So the best way back in is through the broken windows.”

“You could pass through the walls, since you’re the Hound of the Hunt,” Beezle said.

“I could, but the rest of you couldn’t. And my power is temporarily out, anyway,” I said. “What’s next?”

“Up two flights of stairs and down a long passageway to Azazel’s quarters,” Gabriel said. “Which are guarded by a phalanx of his most trusted soldiers.”

“This might be the dumbest thing we have ever done in a long line of dumb things,” Beezle said.

“Much as it pains me to agree with you, you’re right,” I said. “But I really can’t see another option.”

Samiel tapped me on the shoulder.
Would the invisibility spell make a difference?

“Not with Azazel,” Gabriel said. “It may protect us from any lesser demons.”

“Don’t bother,” I said. “I’m sure that Azazel will know that we’ve entered the building.”

“Yeah, what with the smashing and the mangling that usually follows in your wake,” Beezle said.

We walked slowly over the lawn. I limped, leaning on Gabriel. The wolves trotted ahead, sniffing the air. I was exhausted down to my bones. The house seemed like a
giant repository of menace, and I was suddenly afraid for all of us.

J.B. and Samiel flew ahead to check inside the broken windows. Samiel looked back and gave us a thumbs-up.

The bottom sills of the windows were only a few feet off the ground, so the wolves were able to leap through easily. Gabriel lifted me inside, as my wings had disappeared along with my magic.

The throne room was completely destroyed. The fires had been extinguished, but there was a lot of scorched and charred wood everywhere. Three-quarters of the ceiling plaster had come down completely, and the remainder looked like it was going to fall any minute. Bodies of demons and soldier-angels lay everywhere under the rubble. There was nothing stirring, and no sign of Azazel, Antares or Focalor.

“Do you think Nathaniel was smashed underneath the falling ceiling?” I asked hopefully.

“Nah, he’s a cockroach like Antares,” Beezle said. “And like you, come to think of it. Everyone tries to kill you but you keep popping back up.”

“Real nice, Beezle. I’ll remember that the next time you’re crying for a doughnut,” I said.

“Perhaps the two of you would like to cease your bickering until we manage to get out of mortal peril?” Gabriel asked.

We picked our way over the debris until we reached the doors at the back of the throne room.

“This way,” Gabriel said, and led us through into a hallway. A number of other doors opened off the hall, and at the end of it was a wide staircase.

Everything was silent and still. I’d expected more activity—that Azazel would be gathering troops and making plans to destroy us. But there was no noise behind all of
the doors that we passed, and there was no movement in the hall.

Gabriel still had his arm slung around me, propping me up. I was so tired I could barely lift my feet. Beezle made a concession to my extreme exhaustion by letting Samiel carry him instead. The wolves scouted ahead. J.B. and Samiel brought up the rear.

Wade and Jude stopped at the bottom of the stairs and waited for us to catch up. I looked up the flight, and then at Gabriel, and saw that he was thinking what I was thinking.

If we got caught on the stairs, we were dead.

“I had better carry you,” he said.

He put his arms under my shoulders and knees and held me like a baby. It was pretty much impossible to piggyback on an angel. The wings get in the way.

The wolves bounded up quickly, lightly, skipping steps. Gabriel extended his wings as far as he could and flew, carrying me with him. Behind us J.B. and Samiel followed suit.

We landed at the top and faced another long hallway with doors leading off it.

“This is just like Amarantha’s castle,” I muttered. “What does he need all these rooms for?”

“His projects,” Gabriel said. He put me down. The hallway was too narrow for him to carry me.

“What projects?” I asked.

“I was never told,” Gabriel said. “I was a thrall. But I assume that at least one of the projects was the creation of the memory-extraction technology.”

I stared at the doors, sorely tempted.

“No,” said J.B. “We don’t have time.”

“Gods know what he’s got behind there,” I pleaded. “We could destroy his research, stop him from unleashing some other horrible thing on the general population.”

“We don’t have time,” J.B. repeated. “I’d like to go home to my cat tonight.”

“I didn’t know you had a cat,” I said.

“There are a lot of things you don’t know about me,” J.B. muttered.

He was right. It seemed that whenever we talked it was always about me—the problems I had, the family politics, the monsters trying to kill me.

“I haven’t been a very good friend, have I?” I asked.

“Why do you feel compelled to have a heart-to-heart when we are in danger of losing our lives at any moment?” Beezle snapped.

“Because I’m human,” I said angrily. “And I’m trying to remember that I’m more than just some monster-killing machine.”

The wolves stopped abruptly, whining, at the end of the passage.

“Gods above and below,” I said. “What now?”

I hurried forward as quickly as I could on my unresponsive legs. Gabriel cursed softly and ran after me, catching me just as my right ankle buckled and my leg folded underneath my body.

I stared up the second flight of stairs. The wolves growled, their hackles raised.

Two creatures stood on the steps, one behind the other. Both of them were more than seven feet tall, with the raw red skin of exposed muscle, wicked-looking claws and protruding fangs.

I couldn’t believe my eyes.

They were nephilim.

“MEAT,” THE FIRST ONE CROONED.

My mind went blank with terror. I had no magic with which to fight these creatures. And the last time I’d faced a nephilim, I’d died. I’d managed to come back, but it was a traumatizing experience nonetheless.

“Azazel loosed the nephilim?” Beezle said. “He’s totally lost it. He can’t control those monsters. No one can.”

“Meeeeeeat,” the second one said.

All of the nephilim had been locked up in the Forbidden Lands for centuries. The cages that bound them were magically enspelled so that when the nephilim touched the bars, they would be burned or shocked. The cages were just small enough that there was no place for the nephilim to go to find relief, no way to avoid the magic that bound the cage together. Essentially, the nephilim had been tortured for
almost the entirety of their existence. It had made already cruel creatures even crueler, and rather single-minded.

“Meeeat,” they said together.

I pulled Lucifer’s sword from the scabbard.

“Do not even think about attempting it,” Gabriel hissed. “Let Samiel and me manage them.”

“I’m not helpless,” I said.

“You are doing an excellent impression of it,” he replied.

There was a clatter of leather and armor in the hall. I turned to see several soldier-angels filling the gap behind our party.

“Now it doesn’t matter,” I said grimly.

We were trapped at the end of the corridor with the nephilim above us and the soldiers behind us and only about ten or fifteen feet with which to maneuver. The tight quarters meant it would be difficult for Azazel’s troops to fight as well, but that wasn’t going to be much comfort when the nephilim tore our heads off.

J.B. and Samiel engaged the soldiers. Spells shot everywhere in the hallway, bouncing off walls and doorknobs.

Wade and Jude howled and bounded forward toward the nephilim. Gabriel cursed aloud and followed after them. I chased after him, alarmed. I knew that he didn’t want to throw spells that might accidentally harm the wolves, but what was he going to do without magic? Engage the nephilim in hand-to-hand combat?

The wolves reached the first nephilim. Jude leapt for the monster’s neck, jaws open. The nephilim swatted him aside with one giant hand, but Jude seemed to expect this. He went boneless and twisted in midair, landing on his paws.

Jude’s purpose had been to serve as a distraction for his alpha. Wade closed his fangs around the nephilim as the
creature was absorbed with Jude. The nephilim screamed as Wade tore a giant chunk of flesh from its side.

Gabriel reached the first nephilim and blasted it in the face with white fire. The monster lashed out with its fists, blinded by the blast but not particularly hurt. Nephilim are very resilient, and every nephilim responds to the same magical spell differently. What is fatal to one can be nothing more than an itch to another.

The white fire that represented Gabriel’s nephilim magic had barely harmed this one, but Gabriel was already ducking underneath its elbows to go after the second creature.

Jude leapt into the fray again, latching onto the nephilim’s arm and clamping it between his jaws. The nephilim smashed him repeatedly against the wall to try to dislodge him, but the wolf held on.

Wade sprung into the air, slashing the monster across the face with his claws. It felt like it was intruding on the functioning of a well-oiled machine, but I figured the sooner the nephilim were brought down, the better.

“Wade!” I shouted.

The alpha seemed to understand immediately. He squeezed between the nephilim’s leg and the wall and moved on to help Gabriel. Jude released the creature’s arm as I raised the sword high and plunged it into the nephilim’s chest.

The monster screamed. Then, rather horribly, he just kind of…disintegrated. Blood and bone and muscle seemed to melt into long sticky strands that flowed over the steps and made my boots hard to lift. Jude whined and slipped around the mess to help Wade and Gabriel.

Beezle landed on my shoulder. “That is disgusting. That’s even grosser than the spider goop.”

“Like I needed you to rank the quality of monster fluid,”
I said. I lifted my boots out of the muck and ran up the stairs as fast as I could, which was not very fast. The nephilim’s remains were hardening quickly and it was even more difficult to get through them as they changed consistency.

“J.B. and Samiel aren’t getting a break back there,” Beezle said. “For every soldier they kill, Azazel sends three more.”

I didn’t have to look to know that. I could tell by the unrelenting pitch of battle that things hadn’t eased up. “We’ve got to get rid of the other nephilim. Then we can help them.”

I reached the top of the stairs. Gabriel, Jude and Wade had managed to back the second nephilim into the hallway. This one wielded some kind of magic that looked like purple paintballs, but wherever it splattered, the walls were cut through as if by lasers.

“If that stuff touches any of them, it will take off their limbs,” I said to Beezle.

Worse, the nephilim seemed entirely unfazed by either the attacks of the wolves or Gabriel’s spells. Gabriel’s shoulders were set in grim determination, and both the wolves panted from the effort, but they were getting nowhere.

“I’ve got a plan,” Beezle said.

“Really,” I said, looking for an opening.

“Really,” Beezle insisted. He quickly outlined it to me.

“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.