Black Howl

“I don’t like this,” I said.

“This is where the trail brought us,” Jude said. “We need to go forward.”

“Yeah, and if a pack of demons comes from the other direction, we’ll all be jammed up in that narrow passage,” I said. “There’s not a lot of room to fight in there.”

“For our enemies, either,” Gabriel pointed out.

“That means that there will be just as much useless slaughter for them as for us,” I said. “We might take out some of them but we’ll suffer stupid losses in the meantime.”

“Well, what do you suggest we do?” Jude snapped. “Go back through the portal and go home and wait and hope that the demons give Wade and the cubs back to us?”

“No,” I said, frustrated.

I knew that we had to go forward. There was no other way. But when I looked down that tunnel I felt a powerful surge of foreboding.

“Okay,” I said. “Here’s what we’re going to do. I don’t want us to get stopped up in that tunnel. So we’re going to string out in a formation ten steps apart. Beezle will go first…”

“Why me?” Beezle asked. “If you’re looking for someone to take stupid chances, you’re looking at the wrong gargoyle.”

“Because you’re the smallest, and you can fly ahead and scout for us with the least risk,” I said impatiently. “I’ll follow at the head of the column.”

“No, you will not,” Gabriel said.

Samiel shook his head in agreement.

“You both have to get over this idea that I’m helpless,” I said. “Besides, there’s a small chance that any demons we encounter will back off if I show them Lucifer’s symbol.”

“And what if they do not, as you say, ‘back off’?” Nathaniel asked.

“Well, it’s not as though I’m powerless. We’re not arguing about this,” I said to Gabriel and Samiel. “I’m going first. Then Gabriel, ten steps behind me. Then Jude, Samiel and Nathaniel.”

I ordered them thus because I assumed if we ran into trouble, Nathaniel would turn around and run in the other direction and therefore free up some space in the narrow tunnel. I’d never seen any evidence that he was particularly skilled in hand-to-hand combat, and he seemed to value his own skin above anyone else’s.

“If Beezle does run into anything, he’ll come back to us and raise the alarm. Don’t crowd up on me if it comes to a fight. Stay in your positions. We’ll have more room to maneuver and the demons won’t be sure how many of us there are if we’re spread out.”

None of them looked particularly thrilled by my plan, and I have to say that I wasn’t overwhelmed by my brilliance, either. But it was the best I could come up with, and none of them had anything better on offer.

“Let’s go,” I said.

Beezle flew off my shoulder, muttering imprecations at me for forcing an old gargoyle to do such tedious and difficult work.

“There’s a doughnut in it for you if you do your job and stop complaining,” I said.

Beezle looked contemplative. “Deal. Of course, I fully expect that we’ll all be killed by this idiocy.”

And with that he took off down the tunnel. I waited a few moments, and then followed behind him. I very much hoped that Beezle was wrong, and that my half-assed plan wasn’t about to get us all killed.

4

I CREPT FORWARD INTO THE PASSAGE. THE CEILING WAS even lower here than in the cave. Since I am shorter than average, the top of the tunnel was an inch or two above my head. I glanced behind me to see the others filing in silently at the proscribed distance. The men were all hunched over. The wings of the angels scraped lightly against the walls and ceilings, and downy feathers drifted in their wake.

The tunnel gleamed with the same strange light as the cave, but it was fainter. I couldn’t see Beezle ahead of us. He’d obviously gotten a little overzealous with his scouting duties. My heart beat wildly in my chest and I made a conscious effort to silence the sound of my breath. Several minutes passed, and I felt the frantic build of adrenaline inside me, anticipating the attack that would not come.

I became aware of an insistent pressure at my hip and could hear a faint buzzing sound. It belatedly registered that my phone was ringing. I pulled it from my pocket and read J.B.’s name on the screen before stuffing it away again. There was no way I was answering the call right now. Never mind the fact that we could be attacked at any minute—J.B. was probably only calling to yell at me about something.

The fact that I was picking up a cell signal told me that we were still on the Earth that I knew, and that gave me a little comfort. It meant that we didn’t have such a long way to get home. If we got home at all, that was.

Beezle suddenly loomed out of the darkness in front of me and I swallowed a startled scream.

“Are you trying to give me a heart attack?” I hissed.

He landed on my shoulder and whispered in my ear. “You have to see this. Tell the others to stay here.”

“Oh, yeah, like they’ll go for that,” I said.

“Order them to stay if you have to,” he said, and his voice dropped even further, until I could barely hear. I knew he was trying to dodge the supernatural hearing of certain members of our party. “You don’t want Jude to see until you can prepare him.”

My stomach dropped. Beezle must have found the cubs.