“Uh, okay,” I said. I looked at J.B. “See you soon?”
“Now that your little adventure in the court is over, you’re back on the clock, Black,” he said. “So expect to see your usual letter with your pickups tomorrow.”
“All right, Cranky,” I said, slamming the door. What happened to the sweetheart I’d known at the faerie court? He was back to being J. B. Bennett, world’s worst boss.
The driver had dropped us in the same place he’d picked us up—the alley. The car pulled away and Samiel meekly followed Gabriel and me through the backyard and up to the porch. Nathaniel had been as good as his word. A shiny new door hung in place of the one he had torn out of its frame. It was probably a lot nicer (read: more expensive) than one I would have bought myself. This one was actually properly insulated and weather-stripped and everything. And bonus—Nathaniel had been smart enough to make the new lock fit my old key.
I glanced questioningly at Beezle as we all headed up the stairs.
“What’s up with Nathaniel’s face?”
“You were crying out in your sleep,” Beezle said. “And all the men in the car interpreted those cries correctly. Well, Gabriel and J.B. did. I’m pretty sure Samiel thought it looked like fun to hit Nathaniel because everyone else was.”
I felt my face redden in embarrassment. I had not wanted Gabriel to know about Nathaniel’s attempted assault on me. He didn’t say anything as we entered the apartment, and I wondered why he was being so cold all of a sudden. I realized he had barely said a word to me since Nathaniel had healed him.
I dropped my bag in the kitchen and slumped into one of the dining room chairs. “I feel like I could eat a whole pig.”
“Barbecue sounds good,” Beezle said hopefully.
I thought about the tiny amount of money in my checking account that was not Azazel’s. We could probably order out but we wouldn’t have much left over for anything else important until I got a paying job again. On the other hand, I wasn’t capable of cooking anything more strenuous than toast at the moment.
“Bring me the phone,” I sighed.
Beezle clapped his hands together in delight and flew to the portable phone. Gabriel and Samiel watched me in silence. It was eerie. Neither of them looked like Ramuell, thank goodness, so they didn’t resemble each other as siblings. But they wore identical expressions of expectation.
“What are you going to do about Samiel?” Gabriel asked.
“He can live here,” I said.
“And how are you going to explain that to Lord Lucifer and Lord Azazel?” Gabriel replied. “At the very least, he should be brought before the courts for the crime of releasing Ramuell.”
I’d kind of forgotten about that. “Technically, I suppose, he was responsible. But you know that it was Ariell who was controlling him and Ramuell both.”
Gabriel shook his head stubbornly. “The Grigori will not see it that way. He released Ramuell and created portals to draw the nephilim back. He was responsible for his own actions.”
“Are you seriously trying to tell me that I should throw Samiel to the wolves? Don’t you have any compassion at all? Azazel successfully argued to spare your life when you were a baby. Why wouldn’t I be able to do the same for Samiel?” I couldn’t believe he was acting like this. Samiel was his half brother, for crying out loud.
“I was innocent when Azazel saved me. Samiel has committed a crime. That compounds the sin of his birth. He must go before the assembly of the Grigori to face judgment,” Gabriel said.
Samiel watched this argument avidly. I wasn’t sure how much of it he was getting but I already suspected that he was a pretty adept lip-reader. His eyes were wide as he turned his head back and forth between Gabriel and me.
“Why are you trying to pick a fight about this?” I said angrily. “You know I would never consent to such a thing. Samiel stays here with us. End of story.”
“No, it is not the end of the story. I have told you time and again that you do not comprehend Lucifer’s kingdom. His law and his word are absolute. There is no flexing of the rules. Samiel must pay for his crimes.”
Gabriel was white as the moon as he said this, and the corners of his eyes looked tight. Something else was going on.
“This is not about Samiel,” I said. “What the hell crawled up your butt and died? You’d think you’d be happy and grateful that I saved your ass from being used by Amarantha for all eternity.”
“I am indeed happy and grateful, mistress,” Gabriel said tightly.
“What’s with the mistress business?” I said.
“I was Azazel’s thrall until I was taken by Samiel and given to Focalor. Then I was Focalor’s thrall. Then I was Amarantha’s thrall. You have won me from the Maze as your prize; therefore, I am now your thrall,” he shouted.
I looked at him in dawning comprehension. “You belong to me now.”
“Yes.”
I shrugged, relieved that this was all he was upset about. “So I’ll free you, and that’s that taken care of. No big.”
Gabriel stalked forward, his eyes an exploding field of stars on a canvas of black. “You do not understand. It is like you deliberately choose not to understand. How many times must I tell you that Lucifer’s law is the only law? I am a thrall in his kingdom; therefore I am always a thrall. You cannot free me. Only Lucifer can do that.”
“So I’ll ask him to free you,” I argued.
“Which he will not do. It would set a dangerous precedent.”
“Well, so the hell what?” I shouted, losing my temper. “Isn’t it better to be my thrall than Azazel’s or Amarantha’s? You know I won’t abuse you like they would. I’ve always treated you like my equal anyway.”
“But I am not your equal,” Gabriel said, and his jaw was clamped tight. “I will never be your equal. And do you think that I could stand before you as a lover, knowing that I am always below you, that I must submit to your will above my own? Could you accept me thus, never knowing if I was telling you what was in my heart or just what you wanted to hear?”
The anger ran out of me in a rush, my temper deflated. I hadn’t thought about Gabriel’s status in those terms, or really thought about it at all. I’d been so focused on getting him back, and yes, I’d pictured a lot of happy canoodling once we were reunited.
But I didn’t think I would be his mistress. I didn’t think that he would be my slave. It didn’t matter if I treated him as an equal. The fact of his thralldom would always stand in our way.
“Now do you see? You may have kept me from Amarantha, but now my status is a bigger impediment than before. At least before I felt I could speak my feelings to you freely, even if I was unable to act upon them,” he said bitterly.
“You still can,” I said fiercely. “Nothing is going to change between us.”
“Everything already has,” Gabriel said. “And I would advise you not to become too attached to Samiel, for the Grigori will come for him, sooner or later.”
“They won’t take him from me,” I said, and I looked at Samiel as I said it. It was a promise from my heart. “They won’t take you from me. You’re safe here.”
“Do not make promises you cannot keep,” Gabriel advised, and then he walked out of the kitchen.
I rubbed my eyes with my hand. “Really, how many problems can one girl have in a day?”
“Yeah, you totally made an enemy of Focalor and Amarantha, and you broke a bunch of rules by taking in Samiel like a stray dog,” Beezle said.
I turned to see him hanging in the hallway with the phone is his hand.
“Enjoy the show?” I said.
“Not particularly. Contrary to what you may think, I don’t enjoy seeing you hurt,” Beezle said, then he cleared his throat. “So are we having barbecue or what?”
I held my hand out for the phone.
The deliveryman had looked at me funny when he delivered the food, and I realized afterward that while I’d made sure Gabriel was healed by Nathaniel I hadn’t done the
same for myself. Most of my aches and pains had cleared up while I slept, but my face was still bruised and my clothes still covered in blood. And my fingers were still missing. I wondered if anything could be done about that, or if I would be a three-fingered lefty for the rest of my life.
After dinner I settled Samiel in for the night on the pullout couch in my living room. He seemed completely overwhelmed by the trappings of civilization. The food—and its method of delivery—was amazing to him. The toilet got flushed about four hundred times in a row once he figured out what purpose the handle served.
He couldn’t stop touching the lightbulbs, the face of the microwave, lifting and lowering the phone from its cradle. His immense pleasure in the sheets and blankets that made up his bed was apparent. I wondered how long he had been living in that cave in the desert.
I turned out the light, resolving to devise some better method of communication with Samiel tomorrow. He could understand pretty much anything, but he had no way of telling me what he wanted. And I wanted to know more about him, about his life before.
Beezle fluttered up next to me. “I’m going to sleep in my nest tonight.”
“Okay,” I said, a little surprised. I’d thought that after my near-death experience he’d want to stay close to me.
He flew out the front window without another word, and I walked slowly down the hall to my own room. I shut the door in deference to Samiel and sat on my bed.
In the past week I’d lost Gabriel, lost Beezle, survived two attacks by Samiel, discovered the bodies of three wolves, found Beezle and Gabriel, killed a giant spider and a leviathan, lost my magic several times, totally screwed up my assignment as faerie ambassador but had averted an uprising in Lucifer’s kingdom, made a new enemy in Amarantha, been assaulted by my fiancé, lost part of my left hand, taken on the new responsibility of Samiel and defied all expectation and survived the horrors of the Maze.
I was tired.
I was also alone, and I hadn’t expected to be. I curled up on my bed in my bloodied and torn clothes and waited for the tears to come. But my eyes stayed dry all night long.
18
I MUST HAVE SLEPT FOR A WHILE, BECAUSE THE NEXT thing I knew my eyes were open and my heart was beating a thousand miles a minute. The digital clock on my bedside table showed me that it was past three in the morning.
I wondered if a nightmare had woken me from my sleep. I was sure that I would be carrying the events of the Maze around with me for quite a while.
But I didn’t remember a nightmare. Maybe a noise had woken me. Maybe Samiel had gotten up to use the bathroom and I’d registered the sound unconsciously. I wasn’t used to another living being besides Beezle in the house.
I listened for a moment, but didn’t hear anything. I tried to close my eyes again but now that I was awake my brain was whirling. I sat up and swung my legs over the edge of the bed. Lucifer’s sword winked at me. It was leaning in the corner of my bedroom next to my closet. I didn’t remember leaving it there, or in fact carrying it into the house at all.
A second later I saw a strange burst of green light outside. I stood up and went to the window. The light was coming from the alley behind my house. I couldn’t see its source from the angle that I stood at, but it flashed once, twice, three times. And it didn’t look like the kind of light that occurred naturally.
I didn’t relish the prospect of yet another paranormal encounter when I’d just gotten home from my big faerie adventure, but I needed to see what was going on in the alley. A lot of normal people lived in my neighborhood and as far as I knew I was the only person equipped to deal with supernatural weirdness.
“Maybe it’s just some witch’s teenager playing at spellcasting,” I mumbled to myself, but I didn’t really believe it.
I pulled on my boots and a sweatshirt, then started for my bedroom door. The sword winked at me again, and I picked it up. As before in the Maze, the snake on the hilt writhed reassuringly under my palm.
I opened the bedroom door quietly and peeked down the hallway. Samiel was a motionless lump under the blankets in the living room. Beezle was outside. Gabriel was downstairs.
I thought briefly of waking Gabriel to come with me, but our recent conversation suddenly put any request that I might make of him in a mistress/thrall light. I didn’t want him to think he had to come at my beck and call. So I left him alone, and went down the back stairs by myself, wincing every time the wood squeaked. I felt like I was a kid sneaking out of the house while my parents slept.
The new door eased open without a sound—thank you, Nathaniel—and I stepped onto the porch. The light was concentrated directly behind an eight-foot-high wooden fence that surrounds my property, and it was almost blinding now that I was right in front of it. I am constantly surprised by the fact that my neighbors never notice all the really obvious signs of magic generated around my house. It just goes to show that people are adept at seeing only what they want to see.
I swung the sword up, both hands wrapped around the hilt, and crept forward carefully through the yard. The dried and frost-tipped grass crunched under the soles of my boots. I sidled up to the fence and peeked through the slats.
There was a . . . thing in the alley. I don’t know how else to describe it. It was a monster, for sure, but like no monster I’d ever seen before. Its skin was a translucent greenish blue. I could see the play of muscle and bone underneath, the pulse of blood as it rushed through its veins. Its face was turned away from me but large batlike ears protruded from the back of its bare, oblong skull.
It squatted on elongated, froglike legs that ended in slender primate feet tipped with sharp claws. The curve of its spine was long as it bent over something on the ground. Wings nestled against its ribs, and the skin stretched over the wings showed the joints of bone where they connected.
The green light was coming from the creature’s body. I shifted, trying to get a better look at what the creature was doing. It was then that I saw the body the monster was eating.
All I could see was the top of a head, a yellow ponytail with streaks of gray, and the motorcycle boots that protruded from the other side. But that was enough for me to know that this was the other member of Wade’s pack that had been in Amarantha’s court.
And that meant that this creature was the thing that had been killing the wolves all along.
I pushed out my wings and flew over the fence, holding the sword high. I descended on the monster in a silent rush, intending to behead it before it realized I attacked.
Something betrayed me—a whisper of breath, the night air moving over my wings, or maybe just the instinct of prey and predator. An instant before I landed the monster turned, saw me, and leapt away down the alley.
I felt the toes of my boots drag across the asphalt for an instant and then I swept after it. The creature turned to face me and I was nearly blinded by green light. I covered my eyes, squinting, and the monster bounded toward me.
I swung the sword down as the monster reached me and felt its reverberation all the way up to my shoulder. The blade sliced through one of the creature’s arms and it screeched a terrible noise. My eyes were practically shut, squinting in the blazing light coming from the creature’s chest.
The creature lashed out with its other arm, knife-sharp claws slicing at my stomach. I sucked in my belly and danced backward, managing to get away with just a slender cut.
I tried to open my eyes a little more but it was impossible to be this close to the monster without sunglasses. I flew upward in a shot and turned back to blast the creature with nightfire. My spell bounced off the creature harmlessly.
Great. It was immune to nightfire and it was nearly impossible to fight the creature at close quarters without being dangerously blinded. What now? It wasn’t as though I had a whole ton of spells in my arsenal.
The creature flapped its giant wings and followed me into the air. I zipped away toward the lake, and it gave chase. I flew as hard and fast as I could, trying to think
. Maybe I could knock the thing into Lake Michigan and drown it. At the very least I needed to lead it away from populated areas to reduce the risk of collateral damage.
The monster gave another high, keening cry, almost like the scream of a raptor. I glanced behind me to see that it was terrifyingly close, and that its clawed fingers reached for my ankle. I could just barely see the glitter of the creature’s teeth as it smiled.
I sped up, my breath coming hard and my heart beating a thousand miles a minute. The lights of Lake Shore Drive glimmered below us, and beyond that Lake Michigan swirled and crashed in its winter fury.
I stopped abruptly and dropped several feet, leaving the creature confused for a moment. It continued forward for a few seconds, allowing me to dip underneath it and come up behind. I slashed out with the sword and sliced one of its wings from its back.
Bluish blood spurted from the wound and the monster howled in pain. It dropped abruptly, unable to compensate for the loss of the wing. It spun down toward the beach in the darkness, the light from its chest shining like a beacon.
I flew down after it, headfirst, legs tucked in behind me like a skydiver, and using the monster’s own light to follow. I was going to finish this thing off, then call Wade and tell him to come and get the monster’s head.
And then the green light abruptly winked out.
I slowed my furious descent and came upright, wings flapping behind me, toes pointed toward the ground. Had I killed it, or was this some sort of trick?
I flew cautiously down to the place where I thought the creature might have landed. My boots slid in the sand and the lake rolled and crashed against the shore. In late fall, city workers had rolled in with earth movers and created a kind of breakwater out of the beach, mounding up the sand in small dunes. The dunes cast strange moving shadows in the lamplight from the lakefront bike path. There was no sign of the monster anywhere.
I fluttered up again, just a few feet above the beach, and moved north slowly, following the line of the shore. I wondered if I dared risk a light. If the monster was lying in wait for me, then it could use the light to find me. Of course, without light, I wasn’t sure if I could find any evidence of it. And it really would not do if some sunrise dog walker came across the decomposing corpse of a hideous monster in a few hours.
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