Black Wings

by Christina Henry

  “That’s private,” I muttered, my face coloring. Unbelievable, I thought. I was on the verge of having my heart torn out by some bad guy’s lackey and I was embarrassed because he knew that I was the last virgin over the age of thirty in the United States. But I was having trouble thinking straight. I knew I should do something. I just didn’t know what.

  “Oh, your heart will be a pretty prize indeed,” he said, and he pulled back his arm. His fingernails lengthened until they looked like the sharp, curved claws of a tiger, but they were as black as obsidian.

  So this was it. My heart would be torn out by those claws in a second. I was going to die. And Beezle . . . What would happen to Beezle?

  “Mom,” I whispered.

  “Your mommy isn’t going to come for you, little girl,” he said, and he plunged his hand toward my chest.

  An instant before he touched me, a blast of blue flame came out of nowhere and hit the monster in J.B.’s face. The last vestiges of the glamour fell away just before his body went up in flames with the frightening rapidity of a nuclear blast. I saw a seven-foot demon, red-skinned and bat-winged, looking like a Doré engraving from Paradise Lost. He howled in rage one moment, and the next instant, he was gone. Nothing remained except a scorch mark on the walkway.

  I lay there for a few moments, wondering what had just happened, who had rescued me and how on earth I was going to get back up the stairs when I felt like I’d been boxing with a rhinoceros.

  As I looked up in the sky and contemplated these things, I finally noticed that a thick black fog had surrounded my property. It was as if the house had been encased in an opaque bubble. Now that the creature was gone, the fog slowly dissipated. At least that explained what I had perceived as lack of caring on the part of my neighbors. They hadn’t been able to see the big nasty kicking the crap out of me.

  “Beezle,” I said, and sat up abruptly. That was a bad idea. I didn’t just see stars. I saw galaxies, and the galaxies spun and whirled in a way that made vomiting the only plausible option. I breathed slowly in and out through my nose until the queasiness passed, then pushed up from the ground using my hands until I was in a squatting position. I wasn’t sure if I could get all the way up to standing.

  A host of new aches and pains screamed and shouted for attention. My ribs felt bruised; my face was swollen; my skin still burned where the demon’s saliva had touched it. I ignored all these things and focused my blurry eyes so I could find Beezle.

  I squinted until I could see more or less clearly. I spotted Beezle, lying on his belly in the middle of the front lawn. I crab-walked to him very slowly and picked him up, turning him over and cradling him in my hands.

  “Beezle,” I whispered. “Beezle, please be all right.”

  He made no noise or movement except for the shallow little puff as his chest moved up and down. At least he was still breathing. But what was I supposed to do for him? Beezle had never been sick or injured, and I didn’t know anyone else who had a gargoyle.

  I carefully rose to my feet and limped to the porch with agonizing slowness. Grasping the railing, I pulled myself up the porch stairs and stumbled through the front door into the foyer. The downstairs door stood open, the way I had left it when I’d hurried down expecting Gabriel. I frowned and glanced at my watch. It was half past four, well beyond the time I’d expected him. Maybe the creature’s spell had somehow kept him away from the house.

  “And why are you worrying about that now?” I muttered, hauling myself up the stairs with one hand on the railing and one hand cradling Beezle. When I cleared the last stair my breath was coming hard and my ribs were on fire. I pushed my front door open, light-headed, and sank to my knees.

  “Can I help you?” a voice murmured behind me.

  I was pretty out of it, and Gabriel’s voice made me jump about three feet in the air—from my knees, no less. I did a kind of jerky half turn and fell to my left side, landing on my elbow so I wouldn’t squash Beezle while keeping him out of Gabriel’s sight. The impact reverberated through every hurt muscle and bone in my body, and I gritted my teeth as I glared up at him.

  “Knock much?” I said.

  “The door was open,” he said, gesturing down the stairs. He stood in the doorway, looking just as cool and dark and beautiful as he had the day before. He wore the same expensive coat and shoes, and the slightest of creases appeared between his eyebrows as he frowned down at me. “May I ask what happened to you?”

  Oh, a giant freaking demon was just here trying to take my heart and bring it back to his master. No big, I thought. I shifted a little so that I rested on my forearms, legs stretched out behind me, and looked up at him. I really wanted to stand up because I felt it would be better for my dignity, but Pain and Weariness were ganging up on Dignity, and it decided to retreat in self-preservation.

  “I had a little accident,” I said.

  “I see that,” Gabriel replied. He looked at me expectantly, and when it became clear that was all the information he was going to get, he said, “I have the rent check.”

  “Right. The rent check. Can you give me a second?” I asked.

  “I will wait in the foyer.” He turned so quickly and moved so silently down the stairs it was almost as if I’d imagined him.

  “Okeydokey,” I said. “That was awkward.”

  Beezle hadn’t moved through all of this. His breath still came steady but shallow. I had no idea what the creature had done to him or how to fix him. I needed to get rid of Gabriel quickly so I could figure out how to help Beezle.

  I heaved to my feet, trying not to cry out as all my aches and pains flared anew. I staggered into my bedroom and laid Beezle gently on my pillow, covering him up with a bit of my flannel blanket. Then I went into the bathroom to wash my face. I felt grimy.

  I glanced in the mirror to check the damage, and my mouth dropped open. Both of my eyes were puffy and purple. Dried blood and dirt encrusted my chin and my right cheek. My left cheek was bruised where the demon had kicked me. The demon’s saliva had left a spattering of burn marks all over my face, each one no bigger than the size of a small pebble. I lifted my shirt and found my torso covered in black-and-blue marks.

  Gabriel had certainly handled my appearance with composure. If our situations had been reversed, I would have called 911 instantaneously. I looked and felt like I needed professional medical attention.

  “He is very, very cute, but very weird,” I said as I attempted to wash my face gently with a washcloth. I could do nothing about the bruises or the burns right now but I could at least present myself with a blood-free visage.

  And then I slowed, the cloth dropping from my hand into the sink. Why was I worried about how I looked? What the hell was it about Gabriel Angeloscuro that seemed to distract me? Why was he blithely accepting my explanation of my injuries? And just what did a guy who dressed like a broker want with me and my crumbling two-flat?

  Something about that thought seemed to clear my head, almost as if fog was literally being blown away in my brain. In its place came rushing all the doubts and questions that I had dismissed. Gabriel clearly had money, but he wanted to rent here instead of buy somewhere nicer. Was he a drug dealer? On the lam from the government?

  He’d asked a lot of personal questions during the tour of the apartment and I let them pass without my usual attitude. Why? If J.B. had been half as intimate, I would have bitten his head off, partially masticated it and then handed it back to his flailing body.

  And what was up with Beezle? Why did he dislike Gabriel so thoroughly? Why was he so damn mysterious when I asked him about Gabriel? It was almost as if . . . as if ...

  My thoughts strained for the answer. The sensation was painful, physically painful. There was a snap in my head and I blinked, and when I looked in the mirror a little blood leaked out of my right eye, like a ghastly tear. But I remembered what I hadn’t remembered before, the sound of Gabriel’s voice in my head when I fell into his eyes, his voice telling me that he meant no
harm, and to accept him, and not to ask questions.

  And Beezle—he must have bespelled Beezle to keep him from telling me the truth about Gabriel. That was why Beezle had been so mysterious. He would never have willingly concealed the truth about anyone from me.

  I felt rage rise up in me, rage like I had never felt before, and it scorched the air around me. He had violated me, crawled inside my head and made me compliant. Underneath the rage there was a sick, scared feeling, but I pushed it away. My hands crackled as electricity jumped from finger to finger.

  I turned, ready to rush out of the apartment and down the stairs, ready to hurt Gabriel as terribly as he had hurt me. But he was already there, in the doorway of the bathroom, looking calm and knowing. Before I could direct a blazing bolt of magic at him, he put his hands on my wrists.

  “Don’t do something we’ll both regret,” he murmured.

  “What?” I said through gritted teeth. “Like bore a little hole in your brain, like you did to me?”

  “I did not expect you to remember so soon. Truthfully, you should not have remembered at all. Your mind is very strong.”

  His face was very close and I was careful not to look directly into his eyes. I did not want to fall into starshine again and have my will sucked out of me. The pressure on my wrists was firm, but he wasn’t hurting me. I struggled even though it was clear he could hold me there all day without sweating.

  “Didn’t expect me to remember that you violated me?” I spat.

  The little crease between his brows appeared again. “I did not mean to violate you. I simply wanted you to . . . accept me.”

  “You put a geas on Beezle so that he wouldn’t tell me what you were.” My breath came hard and fast. It hurt to breathe like that, with my ribs bruised from the fight with the demon and all that anger and magic crackling inside me. My skin felt tight and hot. I didn’t know how Gabriel could stand so close to me. The magic surged beneath my skin like a live thing.

  He moved closer, to gain a better grip on my struggling, and suddenly the bathroom seemed far too small. My nostrils filled with the scent of apple and cloves. “Yes, I put a geas on the gargoyle.”

  “That’s faerie magic,” I accused.

  “I am no faerie.”

  “Well, what are you, then? And what do you want with me?”

  “Your father sent me,” Gabriel said, and the world tilted.

  All the magic inside me deflated in a rush, leaving me sick and dizzy, like a hangover. My knees buckled and Gabriel grabbed me by the shoulders before I fell down and cracked my head on the bathtub.

  “My father,” I said. “That’s the second time today that someone has mentioned my father. A man I’ve never seen or heard about until today. I thought he was a deadbeat, or maybe just dead. My mother never mentioned his name.”

  “I believe,” Gabriel said, “that Katherine Black was attempting to protect you until you were old enough to understand.”

  “Understand what?” I asked. I didn’t want to hear the answer. Everything was changing, too fast. But I also needed to know, and I would not allow Gabriel or anyone else to keep it from me. This was not the time to be a scared child, and the magic that had surged inside of me flickered in acknowledgment.

  Gabriel shook his head. “It is too soon. You do not trust me. I have failed him.”

  “Understand what?” I asked again, and this time there was no mistaking the command in my voice. Gabriel looked up, surprised. He searched my face, and I met his eyes without fear. I saw a star shooting across the deep canvas of black, but I did not fall in. He would not be able to take me that way again.

  “You are truly his daughter. It is there in your eyes,” he said, and he turned me gently to face the mirror again, holding me there with his hands on my shoulders.

  But he didn’t need to hold me. Shock rooted me in place as I saw the same field of stars in my own eyes that I had seen in Gabriel’s.

  “It’s a trick, a glamour,” I whispered, and I reached toward the mirror to touch my own reflection.

  “It is your destiny, revealed to you at last,” he said, and his hands fell away from me as I trembled and turned to him.

  “Who am I?” My voice sounded childish, afraid.

  “You are the only human child of a cherubim of the first sphere, a chief of the Grigori, Lord Azazel.”

  6

  GABRIEL SAID THIS AS IF HE EXPECTED ME TO KNOW what it meant.

  “A cherubim . . . An angel?” I asked. I thought of those fat little angels on greeting cards holding red bows.

  Gabriel smiled, the slightest upward quirk of his lips. “Azazel was once an angel. But his fall came long ago.”

  “A fallen angel,” I said. I knew I sounded like an idiot, but the revelation was a lot to process. Thoughts bounced around my head at random. Patrick was dead. I had a monster to catch and a concealment charm to pick up. Beezle was sick, maybe dying. And my father was a fallen angel. Plus, James Takahashi’s soul was going to be departing its body around ten forty-five P.M. tomorrow. In all of the commotion, it was easy to forget that I actually had a job to do.

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re here because . . . ?”

  “Your father sent me to protect you until he can call you home.”

  “And home would be . . . ?”

  “In Morningstar’s kingdom.”

  “Morningstar, right,” I said faintly. I had a vague memory from a Sandman comic that I’d read once. My mother had never been big on religious education. “Morningstar is Lucifer?”

  Gabriel nodded.

  “So his kingdom is Hell?”

  “I suppose that is a name that mortals give it. Although mortal descriptions are generally inaccurate.”

  “Oh, really?” I raised my eyebrows at him. “There was a guy here earlier—he kicked the shit out of me, by the way—and he looked awfully like a ‘mortal’s description’ of a demon. Horns and claws and everything.”

  “I said mortal descriptions are generally inaccurate,” Gabriel murmured.

  “I really need a drink of something. Something that has alcohol in it.” I pushed past Gabriel and into the hallway, striding toward the kitchen with my thoughts chasing one another around my brain.

  It was hard to come around to the idea that my father, whom I’d always considered your usual deadbeat, had missed my childhood because he was busy doing . . . whatever it is that fallen angels do. Tempt people, maybe? Was my dad hanging on street corners and in bars, holding out an apple to unsuspecting humans?

  I stood in the middle of the kitchen, staring blankly at my refrigerator.

  “This is why I wanted you to accept me before you learned the truth. Your father said you would react like this,” Gabriel said from the doorway.

  I looked up at him and blinked. “I don’t have any wine, or tequila, or anything else with alcohol in it.”

  Gabriel sighed, muttered under his breath, did a funny little finger wave and suddenly there was a bottle of red wine uncorked on the counter. He had even put a glass next to it.

  I looked at him, then picked up the bottle. “Elysian Fields cabernet sauvignon?”

  He sketched a little bow.

  “Thanks for the magical bottle of underworld juice, but I have chocolate somewhere, and it will do in a pinch.” I started rummaging in the cabinet above the sink.

  He frowned. “You do not want the wine?”

  “I’ve read enough faerie tales to know that only the deeply stupid take food or drink from supernatural beings,” I said, pushing aside a couple of bags of granola and cursing. Where had I put that damned candy?

  “I told you I am not a faerie,” Gabriel said, and he sounded a little affronted.

  “Yeah, but you didn’t bother telling me exactly what you are, did you?” I said, and my voice rose. “Dammit, Beezle, did you eat that chocolate again? I told you, that’s for emergencies only ...”

  My voice trailed off as I remembered what had happened to Beezle.
/>   “Can you fix him?” I demanded.

  “Fix . . . ?” Gabriel asked.

  “Beezle. My gargoyle. The big, horned sweetheart who made mincemeat of my face hurt him, and I can’t tell how.”

  Gabriel looked uneasy. “Show me.”

  I led him into the bedroom. A couple of hours ago, the mere thought of Gabriel’s presence in my bedroom would have sent me into raptures, but now I could see him only as a Beezle-savior.

  Gabriel leaned over Beezle, who was still and quiet on my pillow. The gargoyle had never looked so small to me, or so frail. I ached for his eyes to open so he could give me his best basilisk glare, or to hear him complaining about the sparrows nesting in his perch. I wrapped my arms around myself and watched as Gabriel laid two gentle fingers on Beezle’s chest, then lifted the gargoyle’s eyelids.

  Gabriel murmured something that sounded vaguely like Latin. A little ball of blue flame appeared in the palm of his hand. The room suddenly smelled like a freshly baked apple pie. He turned his palm over and placed his hand on Beezle’s chest. The flame slid smoothly under Beezle’s gray skin and for a moment, nothing seemed to happen.

  “Well?” I asked impatiently.

  “Wait,” Gabriel said. His voice was calm but his eyes looked worried.

  Beezle arched his back and took a great gasping breath. His eyes flew open and he coughed so hard that it seemed his chest would break open from the force of it.

  “Beezle!” I shouted and took a step toward him, but Gabriel held his arm up to restrain me.

  “Wait,” he repeated, and when I started to jostle past him, he grabbed both of my arms and held me in place.

  Beezle coughed and coughed, a terrible choking sound, and his eyes rolled in his head. Then a great cloud of black smoke spewed out of his mouth, a malignant thing that seemed to have glowing red eyes in its depths. For a moment it hovered above him.

  Then it seemed to sense the presence of other people in the room. The cloud turned, spotted me and gave a sickening howl. It rushed toward me with the unerring precision of a bloodhound and the speed of a laser beam.