Black Howl (17 page)

I looked at my husband—my
husband
, I thought, cherishing that word deep down inside me—and wondered just what Lucifer had in store for us.

And I might have imagined it, but Lucifer’s merry laugh seemed to follow us home.

A COUPLE OF HOURS LATER I WALKED OUT OF THE bathroom, wrapped in my bathrobe with a towel on my head, having finally managed to get all of the spider gunk out of my very long hair. I stopped in the hallway between the bathroom and my bedroom, my heart racing with trepidation.

My husband was waiting for me, and this was unknown territory. What if I disappointed him? My feet felt like they were stuck to the floor.

Samiel and Gabriel had rearranged their possessions while I was in the shower. Gabriel’s few things were stacked in the dining room, waiting to be incorporated into my stuff. Samiel had moved his clothes and books downstairs to Gabriel’s former abode. Beezle had gone downstairs with Samiel, saying loudly that they were going to watch a really noisy movie with lots of gunfights and car explosions
and that they were definitely not going to acknowledge any sounds that might be coming from my—
our
—apartment.

“Madeline,” Gabriel said.

He stood in the doorway of my—our—bedroom, wearing nothing but his dress pants. His wings were folded behind him and his feet were bare.

I felt myself staring down the tunnel of the unknown as I had so many times before, and reflected that it was easier to face the prospect of being killed by some horrible monster than to lay myself open, heart and mind and body, before the man I loved.

He was mine. He was all I’d wanted from the first moment I’d met him, and yet I still couldn’t bring myself to walk toward him.

“Madeline,” he said again, and he held out his hand. “I will not harm you.”

I knew he wouldn’t. It wasn’t about harm. It was about my own fears, my own sense of inadequacy.

I drifted down the hall slowly until I reached him. The air smelled like apple pie baking, the smell I associated with Gabriel. I put my hand in his and smiled shyly up at him.

He kissed me, and it was an easy kiss without expectation. The little rabbit thumping away in my chest calmed.

“Let me comb your hair,” he said, and led me into the room.

He’d turned down the sheets. Only the bedside lamp was lit and it gave off a soft glow that left most of the room in shadow. The window was cracked open about half an inch, letting in the frigid January air. I shivered.

Gabriel gave me an apologetic look. “I am often very warm, even in winter.”

“It’s okay,” I said.

The cracked window also let in the sound of thumping bass. One of our neighbors was having a party.

Gabriel led me to the bed and I sat perched on the edge, so tense I was ready to take off. As the moment drew nearer and nearer I felt panic rising again. It was definitely easier to fight monsters.

He knelt behind me and pulled the towel from my hair. The curly mess of it fell over my shoulder and to the middle of my back.

“My hair is too long,” I mumbled, just to have something to say.

“I like it just as it is,” Gabriel said softly, stroking his fingers through the wet tangles and smoothing them out.

A moment later he began drawing my cheap drugstore brush through the strands. I wished suddenly that I was a vainer person, that I colored away the rapidly multiplying gray hairs or that I had bought a nicer brush. Plastic bristles seemed like they were not nearly good enough for such a momentous occasion.

Some of the tension drifted away as Gabriel pulled the brush through my hair with long, sure strokes. Music drifted in through the window, an upbeat dance song about falling in love like a teenager.

“I was never a teenager like that,” I said.

“Like what?” Gabriel asked.

“Like in the song. My mother died when I was so young. You’d think my life would have been one endless party with no parents leaning over my shoulder, but it wasn’t.”

“What was it like?”

“Scary, mostly. I became an Agent when my mom died. I was trying to feed myself and not lose the house. That’s not the kind of information you can share with a potential boyfriend, or even a friend. I had to keep so much of my
life a secret that I was never able to do normal teenage things, like go to the mall or sneak into R-rated movies or get trashed at parties. I never went on a date, never went to the prom. I never made out in the front seat of a car or got in a fight with my mom over a too-short skirt. One day I was a relatively normal kid and the next day I was responsible for the souls of the dead.”

“We are not so different. I did not have a ‘normal’ childhood, either,” Gabriel said.

I twisted to look at him and he stopped brushing. “What was it like, growing up with Azazel?”

Gabriel’s eyes grew distant. “Difficult. There was never a time when I was not reminded of my status. Many of the Grigori disagreed with Lord Azazel’s decision to raise me. I was often forced to battle creatures from other courts to prove my worth.”

“What, like gladiatorial combat?”

Gabriel nodded.

“How old were you?”

Gabriel shrugged. “Eight, I believe, on the first occasion. It has been many years. I cannot remember exactly.”

Eight.
He’d been made to fight for his life when I was riding my bike up and down the street and reading Judy Blume books. I guess my childhood wasn’t so bad after all.

“How old are you, Gabriel?” I asked. I couldn’t believe I’d never thought to ask this question before.

He smiled briefly. “I am not certain it is wise to answer that question.”

“Why not?”

“I believe you are already feeling self-conscious and the answer will make you more so.”

“Don’t you think your wife ought to know the answer?”

He sighed. “One thousand and twenty.”

The light in the room flickered, or it just might have been black spots flickering before my eyes.

“One…
thousand
. With three zeros.”

“Yes,” he said. “But I do not wish for you to, as you say, make a big deal out of this.”

I laughed. “Right, why would it be a big deal that you’re nine hundred and eighty-eight years older than me?”

“Age does not matter,” Gabriel said, his fingers under my chin. “Like you, I am not…experienced.”

I hadn’t thought about that. I’d been so wrapped up in my own worries that I’d forgotten that Gabriel had been forbidden from birth to have sex with anyone. The Grigori would not risk another child of the nephilim’s line being born. And I’d thought I was the last virgin over the age of thirty in the U.S.

“So, I guess neither of us really knows what we’re doing, huh?”

“Madeline,” Gabriel said, and this time there was an undercurrent of implication when he said my name. “I believe we can figure out what to do.”

“Gabriel,” I said, with one last vestige of panic clinging to my voice. “The last time I was on a bed with a guy he tried to rape me.”

He stroked his fingers over my cheek, and I closed my eyes. There was so much gentleness in him. I was amazed that Azazel had never been able to beat it out of him.

“I will never harm you,” he said, and he kissed me again.

He leaned forward, wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me backward on top of him. He was deliciously hot, and in this position all of our relevant parts were rubbing in all the right places.

But he didn’t pull my robe off my shoulders, or attempt
to remove his own pants. He just kept kissing me, until I grew soft and warm and pliant, until my breath was short and my hands were roaming.

Only then did he untie the already loosened belt of my bathrobe and toss it away. Only then did his hands go everywhere that ached for his touch, and his mouth followed.

I unbuttoned his pants, slid my fingers inside, heard him gasp. I was suddenly aware of a power I had never really comprehended before—my power as a woman, the power I had to make a strong man weak—and I smiled.

He smiled back, and I felt my whole being suffused with joy. This was where I was supposed to be—with this man, with this love—and I saw that love reflected back in his face.

When, finally, we came together as one, the room was lit up like a solar flare. Magic exploded in my blood and in my eyes, and in Gabriel’s. That magic mingled until the air was drenched with it, until it soaked our skin, until there was one tremendous explosion, a blazing burst of fireworks in the night sky.

The next morning I woke up with sunshine blazing through the windows. There was the smell of something good wafting from the kitchen. I groggily picked my head up and glanced at the clock. It was already midday.

I rolled over to my back. The sheets smelled like Gabriel, and I closed my eyes, remembering the night before.

Then I got up and pulled on my discarded robe, and went to look for my husband.

He was making pancakes, and whistling. I’d never heard him whistle before.

I leaned in the doorway, content to just watch him for a while. But he must have sensed me standing there, because he turned and smiled.

“Good morning,” he said. I hadn’t realized before how fraught with implication a “good morning” could be.

I crossed the kitchen to him and kissed him, because I could. Because I loved him, and there was no one to tell us not to.

Gabriel dropped the spatula on the counter so he could put his hands to better use. Things were just starting to get interesting again when someone cleared his throat behind me.

“The pancakes are burning,” Beezle said.

I leaned my forehead against Gabriel’s and rolled my eyes. “Why did I think you would give us a little privacy?”

“You had privacy. Yesterday. Now there are pancakes,” Beezle said, flying to the cabinet and pulling out his favorite plate. It was a plastic child’s plate with a cartoon of an owl and the word “night” above it.

He handed the plate to Gabriel, who shook his head at Beezle.

“I don’t want any of those burned ones.”

Gabriel obligingly loaded Beezle’s plate with unburned pancakes. The gargoyle flew to the table and sat down next to his plate.

“Where’s the syrup?” he asked, looking up at me expectantly.

I gave him an evil look, and he made a “pfft” noise at me. “What, did you think you were going to get some kind of honeymoon? You’ve got loads of stuff to do today. Does it really matter if I’m here right now?”

There was a tentative knock at the back door and Samiel stuck his head in hopefully.

I gave him a resigned wave. “Come on in. If you want pancakes, you’d better get them before Beezle eats them all.”

An hour later Gabriel and I landed on the roof of the Agency. Since Beezle and Samiel had seen fit to break up our morning after, I decided it was best to just get on with my regularly scheduled business day. And that meant finding out what J.B. had wanted to show me the day before.

We entered through the rooftop door after a biometric scan of my face and fingerprints. Security at the Agency had been considerably increased since Ramuell’s break-in a couple of months before.

As soon as we exited the stairwell we were all sent through a scanner. This scanner looked and acted a lot like a metal detector, except that it detected magical weapons and methods of concealment. A lot of Agents had worked overtime developing it, and it was now being duplicated at Agencies across the country. No one wanted to risk another massacre.

I had to turn in Lucifer’s sword at the checkpoint—no weapons were permitted past the entry, Agent or not—and I felt terribly vulnerable without it. The sword had saved me more times than I could count since Nathaniel had presented it to me.

J.B.’s office had been moved to an upper floor to correspond with his rise in position to regional manager. His frizzy-haired secretary, Lizzie, typed away in the reception area with her usual look of long-suffering patience. She gave me a tight smile when she saw me.

“He wanted to see you as soon as you arrived. Go on in.”

Usually Lizzie fussed over me like a substitute mother, so I was a little curious as to why she was so short with me, but I went to J.B.’s door and knocked. Gabriel followed closely behind.

“Come in,” he called.

As usual, his desk looked like someone had blown up a bomb made of forms filled out in triplicate. J.B.’s eyes had bags underneath them and his hair stood up in every direction. He looked like he had gotten no sleep at all.

“You look like shit,” I said baldly.

“Yeah, well, staying up all night trying to figure out how to calm dozens of screaming people will do that to you. Not to mention attempting to identify all of them so that they can be returned to their families—eventually,” J.B. said with a touch of asperity.

I felt a little jolt of guilt. I’d been having the night of my life with Gabriel while J.B. had gotten stuck cleaning up the mess with the warehouse. But it did not seem prudent to apologize for my wedding night—particularly to a man who had wanted to date me—so I covered the awkward moment by changing the subject.

“So, what was it that you wanted to show me?”

J.B. pushed to his feet. “You’ll have to come down to the basement. That’s where we’ve been working on it.”

“On what?” I asked as Gabriel and I followed J.B. out of the office and into the hallway.

“Not here,” J.B. said shortly, and pressed the button for the elevator.

Agents bustled back and forth in the hall as we waited, most of them carrying piles of paper. The Agency was definitely stuck in the twentieth century, data-wise. A project had been undertaken to move all of our records to digital media but its importance had diminished after the attack.

Improving security had been the priority, and anyway, most of the upper brass wasn’t completely sold on the necessity of moving to computers. I was sure that they’d felt this
way when the Agency moved from papyrus to paper. There was definitely a culture of it’s-always-been-this-way-and- it’s-fine in my business.

We loaded onto the elevator with J.B. and stood in silence as the doors opened and closed, loaded and unloaded. I had a sudden memory of one of the elevators propped open by a severed human leg, and wondered if it had been this one. It was really a wonder that any Agents had returned to work after the place had been overrun by demons.