Black Howl bw-3

by Christina Henry

  “Why did you tell me to come alone?” I hissed at Beezle. “This would be a lot easier with backup.”

  “I just wanted to give you time to plan. I thought Jude would overreact if he saw the cubs this way.”

  “And so he has,” growled a voice behind me.

  I almost jumped out of my skin. Jude was so close that I could feel his breath on my neck. I turned to see the others crowded up behind me.

  It was absolutely terrifying that four grown men could sneak up on me in the darkness and I had noticed nothing. I was really starting to wonder about my life expectancy.

  I glared at Gabriel. “I asked you to keep them behind.”

  He shrugged. I was beginning to think that he used this I-am-your-thrall business when it was convenient for him to keep me at arm’s length. The rest of the time he ignored me if it suited him. He seemed incapable of leaving me alone in a potentially dangerous situation, whether I ordered him to do so or not.

  Jude looked like he was ready to leap over me and tear the guards into tiny demon pieces. I laid a restraining hand on his shoulder and he turned his furious, burning eyes on me.

  “What now, Lucifer’s spawn?” he said through his teeth, pushing my hand from him.

  “Don’t go charging in like an idiot,” I said, my own temper rising. I was sick of being called “Lucifer’s spawn” and having to deal with Jude’s rages. “We need a plan.”

  I deliberately stepped back from the opening and waved them all to me. Nathaniel, Gabriel and Samiel followed, but Jude took another look at the cubs, then glanced at me.

  “Don’t even think about it,” I whispered angrily. “Do you want to save their lives or do you want revenge?”

  Jude growled something that sounded like, “Why not both?” but joined the group with obvious reluctance.

  I outlined what I thought would be the best course of action given our limited numbers. They all nodded, even Jude.

  Samiel stepped forward, to the edge of the precipice, and spread his wings wide. It was a mark of how disengaged the demons were that they didn’t notice a tall blond angel ready to take flight right at their doorstep.

  I stood behind Samiel, Gabriel at my shoulder. Reaching inside me, I found the flickering candle that was the source of my magic. A blue ball of nightfire appeared, floating above the snake on my right palm. Beside me, Gabriel readied the same spell.

  I tapped Samiel once on the shoulder. He took flight, arrowing over the heads of the cubs and straight toward the other entranceway.

  The snoozing demon suddenly open his half-closed lids wide and the front legs of the chair slammed into the ground. He never had a chance to cry out. I hit him in the chest with nightfire and he burst into a riot of blue flames.

  His equally lazy compatriots tried to rise to their feet, to turn and fight, but Gabriel took out one and I the other. The three of them were nothing but ash by the time Samiel landed in the doorway at the other end. He turned to us and made an “okay” sign with his fingers, indicating that the alarm had not been raised.

  The rest of us ran down the ramp to the floor of the cavern and began untying the cubs. The children didn’t indicate that they were even aware of our actions.

  Some of them slumped in exhaustion as the bonds that held them upright released their limbs, but they all continued to stare into the light pulses as though under a spell, even after we removed the tape from their eyes. None of us could find an off switch for the devices.

  Jude gently shook the shoulder of one of the older boys. “Kieran? Wake up. It’s Jude.”

  “Do you think it’s safe to just lift them away from the cameras?” I asked Gabriel.

  He frowned. “I do not know. They seem to be under some sort of compulsion. I am afraid that if we did such a thing, we might damage their minds.”

  “We can’t stay here,” I said, watching Jude grow increasingly frustrated as he approached each child, called him or her by name, and received no response. “I’m sure there are other guards here, and I don’t want to try to battle a demon horde while protecting twenty cubs.”

  “Perhaps if we try to cover their eyes?” suggested Nathaniel. “First one, then the other. Maybe it will break the hold gradually.”

  “Or maybe,” Jude growled, pulling away from another unresponsive child in anger, “we should just break the fucking things.”

  He kicked the camera that was nearest to him even as I cried out, “No!”

  The falling camera knocked over the rest of the machines in the row like a cascade of dominoes. The effect on the cubs was immediate. They all began to scream in unison, high-pitched wails that grew louder and louder.

  There was a clatter of noise from beyond the cavern, the sounds of dozens of clawed feet clicking on the surface of rock, the angry, harsh cries of demon curses.

  “Great,” I said to Jude. “Just great. Come on, let’s get them out of here before we’re overrun.”

  Samiel stayed at the door and readied his nightfire. He still preferred to use his fists over his magic but he was a very fast learner. In some ways he was much more adept than I, and I’d had years of practice using my magic as an Agent.

  Nathaniel scooped two cubs under his arms. As soon as the children were separated from the pulse of the machines, they went stiff and began screaming.

  “Just get them up into the caves!” I shouted. “Nathaniel, you help me collect the kids. Gabriel, you help Samiel hold off the demons.”

  “I’m going to scope out the action,” Beezle said, and flew off in the direction of Samiel. It was a good thing Samiel couldn’t hear or else Beezle would probably drive him insane with suggestions for how best to conquer the approaching horde.

  Nathaniel and Gabriel headed off on their appointed tasks and I turned to Jude. He stared at the screaming cubs. He looked like he wasn’t sure if he was going to be sick or tear somebody’s head off.

  “Jude, take a couple of cubs and head up into the tunnel. Try to get them to respond to you.”

  He turned on me with a snarl. “I want to rip the limbs off the demons that did this to our cubs, not play nursemaid.”

  “Will you stop arguing about every freaking thing?” I shouted. “They know you. We’re going to need the older kids to walk if we want to get out of here, so JUST DO WHAT I SAY! Nathaniel and I will fly them up to you.”

  Jude huffed out an angry breath, then grabbed a couple of kids and bounded up to the tunnel.

  I picked up two of the smaller children and they both began to scream. It broke my heart to hear such little ones in so much pain.

  “Shh, shh,” I tried to soothe as I flew up to the tunnel. “It’s going to be all right.”

  I handed them to Jude, who looked grim. I couldn’t blame him. The cubs were all still screaming their heads off. We had a lot of tunnel to cover to return to the portal, and I had no idea how we would do it with almost two dozen damaged kids.

  As I flew back to the cavern I heard the sounds of demons crying out, and the air was filled with the smells of ozone and cinnamon. The fine hairs on the back of my neck stood up as the energy of magic filled the cavern.

  Samiel and Gabriel were throwing spells faster than I could see. I didn’t want to think about how many demons had to be in that passage beyond the cavern.

  I approached the last cubs. Nathaniel was carrying three or four at a go and there were only these two remaining. One of them was perhaps four years old, and the other looked about eight.

  As soon as I separated them from the machines the younger child began to scream like the others. The older child, however, got up and walked away from the chair, toward the cavern wall. His eyes were blank and staring but he didn’t seem to comprehend what was before him.

  “Hey!” I called after him. I was cradling the little one, who had to weigh at least forty pounds, in my right arm. I touched the older child on the shoulder with my free hand and he cried out as if I’d burned him.

  “Can’t stop—sorry red—gotta go!” he
shouted.

  I stared at him. The boy walked into the cavern wall face-first, bounced off and walked into it again. Just like the ghost I’d found. Just like all the ghosts that J.B. had told me were popping up all over the city.

  “Umm, are you just going to stand there contemplating the mysteries of life or are you going to stop that kid from breaking his nose?” Beezle asked.

  I shook my head, coming out of my reverie, and looked around. Nathaniel had gone to help Gabriel and Samiel, and Jude had his hands full with the cubs.

  “Get those cameras,” I said to Beezle as I stepped forward and lifted the older boy away from the wall.

  The younger child in my right arm was screaming in my ear and it made it hard for me to think. I flew the cubs toward Jude.

  “Why?” Beezle called after me. “Don’t you think you have greater priorities right now?”

  “Just do it!” I shouted over my shoulder. “Why does everything I say have to be questioned?”

  I handed the last two children to Jude. The older boy was mumbling something under his breath. I leaned closer so I could hear what he said.

  “I am the scream—I am the scream—I am the scream…”

  My eyes widened.

  “What is it?” asked Jude.

  I shook my head. There was no time to explain. “Start herding the kids toward the portal as best you can. I’m going to see if we can’t close off entry to the cave on the other side.”

  “What about Wade?” Jude asked.

  “We don’t know for certain that he’s here. The cubs have to be our priority.”

  “He was with the cubs,” Jude said stubbornly. “If you close off the entry, how will we find him?”

  “We can’t let the demons chase us down when we have twenty incapacitated kids,” I snapped. “I promise you, we will come back for Wade. Let’s just get the cubs to safety.”

  While I argued with Jude, Beezle had managed to carry several of the camera-things up to the mouth of the tunnel. He looked breathless and out of sorts as he turned back to get another load. I flew next to him for a moment as I crossed the cavern to the others.

  “You’d better have a good reason for this,” he grumbled.

  “Look at it this way—you might actually burn a calorie or two,” I said sweetly.

  He dipped down to the cavern floor, cursing up a storm, and I continued on to the other entrance. The three angels stood shoulder to shoulder, and all of them looked beleaguered. When I stepped around Nathaniel and peered down the mouth of the tunnel, I could see why.

  The tunnel was packed from floor to ceiling with the same kind of green demons that had been monitoring the cubs. They hung from the ceiling, crawled along the walls and ran over the floor of the cave. They were packed so densely that they appeared to be one giant pulsing mass, a many-tentacled monster with a thousand burning eyes.

  Gabriel, Samiel and Nathaniel were blasting as many of the demons as they could, and it was keeping the horde back—for the moment. But for every demon that was nightfired into oblivion, it seemed there were three more.

  I blasted a few of them myself from underneath Nathaniel’s shoulder and then went around to Gabriel.

  His face was white with strain and his teeth gritted from the effort of trying to hold back the tide.

  “Let’s close off the tunnel,” I shouted.

  He didn’t look away from his task, but his left eyebrow quirked upward. I knew he was thinking of Wade. So was I.

  “We have to get the cubs away,” I said, and threw some nightfire at the approaching horde. “You, Samiel and Nathaniel keep at it while I take down the wall.”

  He nodded grimly and passed my message down the line. I had been practicing my spellcasting over the last month or so, since it seemed that every time I turned around I had a new enemy. The presence of Lucifer’s mark had also awakened some interesting new abilities, although those powers didn’t yet come easily to my call.

  I took careful aim at a portion of the rock ceiling that was about four feet beyond the leading edge of the demon mass; then I reached inside, to the place where the source of my magic flickered, and pushed it through my heartstone.

  There was a surge in my blood, a painful electricity running through my veins. My body went stiff and I threw my hands out in front of me.

  Blue lightning shot from the tips of my fingers and crashed into the target I had aimed at. The effect was immediate. Huge chunks of rock rained down in front of the demons. Cracks spread from the point of impact and more debris fell. The demons hissed angrily and backed away from the falling stones. Several of them were crushed, and my companions continued to blast nightfire at any demons foolish enough or lucky enough to make it past the falling rocks.

  The air quickly filled with dust but the fallen rocks only partially blocked the tunnel. I didn’t want the demons to come surging over a pile of rock, so I sent another lightning blast at a visible fault line.

  The effort of pushing the spell through a second time brought me to my knees. This happens to me a lot. The angelic part of me controls powers that were normally wielded by immortals. The human part of me fatigues in the face of those powers. I could probably be one of the strongest creatures in Lucifer’s realm were it not for that tiny beating stain of mortality.

  The second lightning blast did the trick. Bigger chunks of rock fell as the whole tunnel became unstable. Gabriel grabbed me under the shoulders and dragged me backward as giant boulders crashed into the mouth of the tunnel. The sight and sound of the demons were completely obscured by the crash of falling rock.

  I pushed to my feet, shaking Gabriel away. The four of us stood watching the tunnel disappear. I hoped I’d done the right thing and that I hadn’t just buried Wade under a gigantic pile of rubble.

  Huge clouds of dust billowed out of the hole where the exit used to be. I approached the rock pile, which still bore the sparkling remnants of electricity from my lightning bolts. Tiny blue arcs shot all over the surface, and far on the other side of the profusion of rock I heard the howls of demons. And I could hear the shifting of stone. I had blocked the tunnel, but it was a temporary measure. The demons would come for us as soon as they cleared the way.

  5

  “LET’S GET OUT OF HERE BEFORE THAT PILE COMES tumbling down,” I said.

  I flew toward the upper cavern entrance, the other three following closely behind me. Beezle was huffing up there with the last couple machines. I caught up to him and took the objects out of his claws. He immediately flew up to my shoulder and landed with a grunt.

  “You’d better have a realllly good reason for this,” he repeated. “And you owe me doughnuts, big-time.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said, landing in the cave.

  There was no sign of Jude or the cubs, but I could hear the echoes of the kids screaming from farther down the tunnel. The pile of cameras lay haphazardly stacked close to the place where the ramp tipped down.

  I pulled off my overcoat and made a makeshift bag in which to carry the cameras. My entourage came through the entrance and crowded around me in curiosity.

  “Madeline, why are you wasting your time with these devices?” Nathaniel asked.

  There was a funny note in his voice, an emotion that I couldn’t place that made me glance up at him. I didn’t see anything unusual. He was scowling at me, but that was pretty much his default expression when he wasn’t trying to make amends with me.

  “Whatever is in these cameras—or whatever they are—is behind those weird ghosts that keep popping up all over the city,” I said, stuffing the last of the devices in my coat and tying the sleeves together into a handle. I double-knotted it to make sure that it would stay and stood up. “Let’s go.”

  “What ghosts?” Nathaniel asked.

  “I’ll explain later,” I said.

  “Yes, you had better,” Gabriel said, peering back the way we came from. “Some of the rocks are starting to shift.”

  “The horde is coming through,” I
said.

  As I ran down the long passageway toward Jude and the cubs, I retracted my wings so that I could maneuver more easily in the narrow space. I glanced behind me to make sure the others followed. They did, but all three were hunched and grimacing. Unlike Agents, angels can’t make their wings disappear at will.

  We caught up to Jude very quickly. He was red-faced and sweaty and quite obviously at the end of his rope. The cubs still screamed, endlessly. Some of them were getting hoarse.

  “If we’re lucky, they’ll lose their voices,” Beezle muttered.

  “Hush,” I said, though I privately agreed. Nothing seemed to stop the children from wailing. They were hurting themselves, and, even worse right now, they were broadcasting our location to any monster who cared to find us.

  Jude gave me a look that spoke his frustration eloquently. The cubs would not move forward unless herded. If left to their own devices, they would either stand still and scream or else walk into the wall over and over again like malfunctioning wind-ups.

  “There are five of you and twenty kids,” Beezle said. “What now, genius?”

  “We’ll carry the littlest ones,” I said. “We can herd the older cubs.”

  From far behind us I heard the ominous crashing of rock.

  “Hurry, hurry,” I said, scooping up the two smallest cubs.

  It wasn’t easy juggling the kids and my makeshift bag, especially with Beezle firmly planted on my shoulder. I nudged two kids who looked like first-graders with my knees.

  “Walk forward,” I said.

  Miraculously, they obeyed. They still screamed, but they marched through the tunnel like little automatons. I looked at Beezle, who shrugged.

  “Stop screaming,” I said loudly.

  The cubs stopped abruptly, as if a switch had been thrown. The silence was eerie.

  They all looked at me expectantly, except for the ones I had already told to walk forward. They had disappeared into the shadows ahead.

  “Jude, go after those other two. You lead the column,” I said.