“Be careful, sister. Those demons that you hold in such contempt will be your masters soon enough.”
I tried not to imagine what he was talking about and failed. It is not pleasant to contemplate a future in which you will be raped and tortured by demons. I hoped that Antares could see none of this on my face, and kept my voice even.
“I doubt that very much. Those two ran off as soon as Gabriel looked at them sternly, remember?” I said, referring to the time when Antares had tried taking J.B. hostage in order to draw me out. “He’s probably tying them in knots as we speak.”
Doubt flickered across Antares’s face for a moment. He tightened his embrace. We would look like lovers but for the blood running from my skin at his touch. I felt a wriggling around the vicinity of my ribs and I froze, remembering Beezle. He’d probably fallen asleep in my pocket again and was now trying to get out.
Stay down, Beezle, I thought desperately. Antares had put Beezle in a gargoyle version of a coma once, and Beezle had taken it personally. I didn’t want him trying anything stupid in the name of revenge.
I put my hands on Antares’s chest and did my best to look threatening. It’s hard to look like a badass when you are very petite but I gave it my best.
“You’d better let me go or I’ll blast you from here to Gary, Indiana,” I said. The wriggling in my pocket grew more frantic and I could hear Beezle’s muffled, indignant cries.
Antares smiled, and his smile chilled me to the bone. “No, you will not do that, little sister. I understand that your powers have left you.”
How could he know that already? I wondered. Unless . . .
“Have you been following me?” I said, and my voice dripped with contempt. “Like some mangy sneak-thief?”
Antares’s grip tightened, and I realized I was growing faint from blood loss. I could feel it running in rivulets from my arms and back.
“This mangy sneak-thief managed to catch you and that foolish human unawares. You should show me more respect, sister. I know something that you do not.”
“I find that extremely difficult to believe.”
“I know what slaughtered the wolf. I know what hunts you. I know secrets that you cannot even begin to fathom.”
I tried not to show it, but I was definitely interested. I wanted to know what had happened to that wolf.
“If you’re talking about Samiel, you’re not telling me anything new.”
“There are things worse than a nephilim’s child. Horrors that you cannot comprehend. But I know. I know of matters that the lords of the Grigori themselves do not know.” The pupils of his eyes grew thinner in his excitement. “I will make you respect me before you die.”
I am not afraid of death. You can’t be afraid of death when you do my job. But I did not want to die screaming at the hands of a demon. And as I thought that, I felt something rise up inside of me, and I knew that my magic had only been sleeping awhile. Then I heard a gurgling yell.
Antares looked away from me for a moment, and I pushed that magic up, up to the tips of my fingers still planted on his chest. Electricity crackled where I touched.
He turned his face back to me. I smiled and said, “Boo.”
Then I let loose the magic, and it surged through me and into Antares, blue fire that blasted him away from me. I heard him screaming in pain as he was launched several blocks away.
My wings having reappeared along with my powers, I fluttered up from the ground and looked around. Antares had disappeared. This was not unusual. It was a neat little magic trick that he had inherited from his mother. It generally followed a battle in which he had a lot of woundlicking to do.
Beezle popped out of my pocket and glared up at me. “You kept me in there on purpose.”
“Absolutely. I didn’t want Antares to turn you into gargoyle bits.”
“I can handle that powerless fool,” he said indignantly.
I stroked his head soothingly. “Yes, I’m very unreasonable. I just don’t know what I would do without you.”
Beezle tried not to look pleased and failed.
There was a groan from nearby, and I looked around the backyard. J.B. was lying facedown in my fallow vegetable garden. He had been wearing a puffy green ski jacket, and the back of the jacket had been scorched away by the bolt. The garment hung in blackened ribbons from his shoulders. I could see long shiny welts on his back where the magic had burned through his clothing.
I rushed to his side as he attempted to turn over. Beezle emerged from my pocket and flapped around us like a bossy mosquito.
“Don’t turn him that way. You’ll get dirt on the burns,” he said.
“I think I can handle this without instruction,” I said, annoyed.
Kneeling in the dirt, I helped J.B. to sit up. His face was scraped and bruised from the impact with the ground.
“Was there a tornado?” he asked, wincing in pain as I helped him to his feet.
“A tornado named Antares,” I said grimly.
“Where are the others?”
“I don’t know,” I said, and tried not to worry about Gabriel. Surely he’d just been delayed at the crime scene with Baraqiel. Antares’s henchmen were no match for a half nephilim, whatever my deluded brother might think.
J.B. leaned heavily on my shoulders and we hobbled toward my back porch. He negotiated the three wooden steps very slowly.
“I don’t think we can get to the second floor like this,” I said, my head spinning. The loss of blood and the shock of my earlier fall from the sky finally caught up with me. I sat down on the top step and J.B. collapsed beside me. We leaned on each other like two drunks, both of us panting from exertion.
“You need an elevator,” J.B. said.
“She needs help from that useless devil, is what she needs,” Beezle said, fluttering around my head anxiously. “He could heal her in a trice if only he were where he was supposed to be.”
“You don’t think that Antares’s men really could have harmed him?” I asked.
Beezle scoffed. “Those two miscreants? Not a chance. And remember, Baraqiel was with him.”
“Baraqiel was injured,” I pointed out.
“And if it was so easy to handle Antares’s men, where are Gabriel and Baraqiel?” J.B. asked.
Once worry was given free rein, I could conjure any number of scenarios in which Gabriel and Baraqiel could disappear. They had been attacked by Samiel. They had been attacked by Focalor, one of the Grigori who hated Azazel. They had been attacked by some other horror that I hadn’t thought of yet.
Horrors that you cannot comprehend. That was what Antares had said. He was a braggart, and most of the time I was inclined to ignore what came out of his mouth. But there had been truth in his voice. He knew something about what had happened in that alley. He knew, and he was obviously planning to use that information to his advantage. In the meantime, Gabriel was missing, J.B. was horribly burned, and I was bleeding out on my back porch. And Beezle was driving me crazy by fluttering around and muttering imprecations about Gabriel.
“Beezle, why don’t you make yourself useful and find some Band-Aids?” I said.
“And possibly some kind of burn cream,” added J.B.
Beezle flew around the house to the window that was always open on the east side. As he went, I was sure I heard him say something about needing a doughnut.
“No doughnuts until I stop bleeding!” I shouted after him.
J.B. snorted a laugh, then grabbed his side. “It hurts to laugh.”
I had enough sense to realize that J.B.’s injuries were worse than mine. He might be hemorrhaging internally or have a broken rib from when Antares blasted him across the yard. The burns on his back had to be causing him incredible pain. He needed medical attention, and I needed to get my bleeding self together and provide it.
I didn’t have the knack of healing that Gabriel and many other angels seemed to possess. Or if I did, I couldn’t yet access or control it.
But I could c
all an Agent Medi-Team. They were specially trained to deal with supernatural injuries that occurred on the job. If I had been thinking clearly, I would have called them already. I groped in my coat pocket for my cell phone and couldn’t find it. I patted all of the pockets in frustration and realized that it had probably fallen out during my skydiving attempt.
“Do you have your cell phone?” I asked J.B. as he watched me curiously.
He looked kind of glazed, like he was drunk. I probably looked the same way. I felt myself getting more lightheaded as the minutes passed, and it occurred to me that Antares must have some kind of anticoagulant in his claws. I was still bleeding as heavily as before and the wounds showed no signs of clotting.
J.B. was slow to respond, so I started patting him all over, looking for the telltale bulge of the phone.
“Is this really the time?” J.B. asked as he leaned against the wall and closed his eyes while I searched. “You haven’t even taken me to dinner yet.”
I checked the inside and outside of his ruined jacket, and even the pockets of his jeans, but there was no phone.
“Might have fallen out when I was blasted. Or before that. Who knows?” J.B. murmured. He sounded like he was falling asleep.
That was bad. I knew enough about medicine to know that if he went to sleep now, he might never wake up.
“Beezle!” I shouted, heedless of the hour and my sleeping neighbors. “Beezle, come here now!”
I heard the scrape of a window against its frame, and looked up to see Beezle shooting out of the kitchen with a small first aid kit clutched in his claws.
“What’s the fire?” he asked, tossing me the kit.
“Go and get the portable phone from the house. J.B.’s barely holding it together and I need to call a Medi-Team for him.” I patted J.B.’s cheek and he grunted. “Don’t go to sleep.”
“I don’t know if the portable phone will work out here,” Beezle said doubtfully.
“Just get it, Beezle!” I snapped. “I don’t have time to debate with you.”
“This wouldn’t be necessary if he were here to do his job,” Beezle grumbled as he flew back toward the kitchen window.
I silently agreed with him. If Gabriel were here, he could have healed both me and J.B. without much effort. But unlike Beezle, I didn’t read any sinister implications in Gabriel’s absence. If he could be at my side, he would be. It was that simple. Never mind the bond between us; if Azazel found out that I came to harm because of Gabriel’s absence, he would grind Gabriel into small and bloody pieces.
Beezle came zooming out again with the phone. I snatched it from his hands and dialed the Medi-Team number. But when I held the receiver to my ears I heard nothing but the crackle of static.
“Dammit,” I muttered.
“I told you,” Beezle said.
It was hard to think. Blood flowed from the wounds at my back and arms, slow but unceasing. I tried to stand but found that I was too weak, and my knees slipped in the blood pooling on the peeling wood of the porch. My face slammed into the railing and I saw stars.
“Maddy, don’t try to move,” Beezle said, his voice alarmed. “I’ll get help.”
“From where?” I asked, holding my hand to the side of my face. I thought I’d heard something crack when my cheek hit the wood.
“I’ll get Azazel,” he said.
I had to think for a minute about why that was bad. “If you get Azazel and he comes here and finds Gabriel missing, he will kill him.”
“If I don’t get Azazel now and you bleed to death in your own backyard, he will kill me.”
“Don’t get him. I’ll figure out something.” The last person I wanted to see at that moment was Daddy dearest.
The wind picked up, and I shivered inside my coat. Beezle was having trouble staying close, his wings buffeted by a breeze that was fast becoming a gale. I reached out and grabbed him, stuffing him inside my pocket before he blew away.
“What the . . . ?” I said, and crawled slowly toward J.B., who wasn’t moving at all. I felt for a pulse and found one, but he did not stir at my touch.
The wind racketed around us. My hair came free of the woolen hat I was wearing. I covered J.B.’s still body with my own, clinging to his shoulders.
A faint red light appeared just above my garden, and the light grew until it was a circle the size of a city Dumpster. Inside the circle, wind swirled and electricity pulsed.
Beezle poked his head out of my pocket.
“It’s a portal,” he shouted.
I knew that. I just didn’t know who was in it, and if they were friend or foe. My magic crackled feebly across my fingertips. I was too weak to do anything.
A figure emerged from the portal, tall and blond and radiantly beautiful. He brushed some imaginary lint from his white-feathered wings. The portal closed behind him and the wind died down. The angel looked up, and the natural arrogance on his face turned to surprise.
I had been wrong. There was one person that I wanted to see less than my father.
“Hello, Nathaniel,” I said to my fiancé.
3
NATHANIEL HURRIED TOWARD THE PORCH, TAKING IN the situation in an instant.
“Madeline, what has happened?” he said, as he pulled me away from J.B., put me in his lap and checked my wounds. “Where is your bodyguard?”
Nathaniel never referred to Gabriel by his name, which was just one of many things that I disliked about the man whom my father had engaged me to against my will.
“Antares,” I said briefly. I felt dizzy, and Nathaniel wasn’t helping by shaking me around.
“How did you incur these injuries?” he said, covering each with his hands one after another. I felt a familiar heat, like the light of the sun was burning through my veins.
This kind of healing used to be very painful for me, when I was still mostly human. Now that I had acknowledged my heritage and my heart had been replaced by an angel’s heartstone, it was only slightly less painful. The half of me that would always be human knew that the sun was not supposed to run wild in your blood, nor was it supposed to heal you. The angelic half of me welcomed the heat and the burn like homecoming.
The blood ceased to flow, and I felt the skin knit together painfully. I didn’t feel like getting up and dancing around yet, though. The kind of healing that Nathaniel did could close up injuries but it didn’t help with recovery time.
“Thanks,” I said, and tried not to sound resentful as I did. It wasn’t Nathaniel’s fault that my father had affianced us without my permission, or that I wanted someone else. It was his fault, however, that he was totally unlikable in every way.
“What about J.B.?” I asked, squirming off his lap and onto the porch.
Too much proximity to Nathaniel made me uncomfortable. He is beautiful, and it is hard not to be drawn to beauty. But he is also a giant jerk, and no amount of attractiveness can make up for that. I did not want to think about our wedding night.
“J.B.?” he said, his eyebrows raised. “This human that you were . . .”
He trailed off, staring at J.B.’s limp form.
“Gods above and below,” he swore, and rushed to J.B.’s side. He lifted J.B.’s eyelids, checked his pulse, and then picked him up as if a six-foot-plus man weighed nothing. “What have you done with Amarantha’s son?”
I looked at Beezle, who was perched like a crow on the railing of the porch. He looked surprised.
“Who is Amarantha, and what does she have to do with J.B.?” I asked, pulling myself to my feet. The world wobbled in many directions.
Nathaniel kicked open the door and flew up the back stairs to my apartment without answering me. I heard a crash as he knocked out the door upstairs as well.
“Those locks cost money, you know!” I shouted, annoyed by both his high-handedness and his abandonment of me. Did he think I could walk or fly in this state? “What crawled up his ass?”
“Amarantha is the queen of the local faerie court,” Beezle said. “I didn
’t know J.B. was her son.”
Beezle was like a phone book of things that go bump in the night. He knew every species, every subspecies, every hierarchy and every rule. He could run the gamut from werewolf law to the vampire courts to the reigns of demons. There was very little that Beezle did not know. I wondered how J.B. had managed to conceal his status from my gargoyle.
“Well, presumably Amarantha is someone with a lot of influence or else Nathaniel wouldn’t have touched J.B. even if he were wearing gloves,” I said, staggering toward my back door. “On the upside, this means that he is probably healing J.B. as we speak, and I don’t have to threaten him to do it.”
I grabbed the doorframe and leaned on it for a minute, which gave me a good look at the damage Nathaniel had done to the lock by kicking it. The door normally locked with a dead bolt. The bolt had torn through the wooden frame and was now totally useless, which left my abode uncomfortably open to the aforementioned things that go bump.
A threshold, even without a door, is enough to stop most supernatural beings of power. Vampires, werewolves, fallen angels, demons . . . none of them could cross a threshold without an invitation. Nathaniel had been (reluctantly) invited inside by me before, so he was able to cross the threshold without penalty.
But there were plenty of lesser magical beings for whom the rules were a little more fuzzy. They could construe an unlocked or open door as an invitation. I didn’t fancy an infestation of gremlins eating all of Beezle’s precious popcorn stash or an imp whispering nasty things to me while I slept. And repairs cost money, money that I didn’t have. I usually generate some income by working as a freelance recipe developer, but since I’d been running around trying to keep up with my Agent duties and Azazel’s demands, I hadn’t had much time for that work lately. Although I supposed that since Nathaniel had done the kicking and the breaking I could get him to pay for the repairs.
I dragged myself up the back stairs, holding on to the railing as if it were a lifeline. Beezle fluttered around my head, cajoling me to keep moving forward when I wanted to stop and rest.
When I got to the top of the stairs, I saw that Nathaniel had repeated his destroying act on the upstairs door, which hung drunkenly from its hinges like a scene from a Bugs Bunny cartoon. I slumped on the landing, exhausted and annoyed.
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