Black Howl

“Five now,” I said, remembering the spiders in the warehouse.

“I wouldn’t mention that if I were you,” J.B. said. “We want to gather information, not provoke her into trying to kill you on the spot.”

“For Maddy those two things are often intertwined,” Beezle said.

“Remind me again why you never stay home anymore?” I asked.

“Your life would be a lot more boring without me,” my gargoyle said.

We all lined up in front of the portal, Gabriel staring at me blandly when I tried to step in front of him.

“You’re not my bodyguard anymore,” I said.

“Call it the right of a husband,” he said, and disappeared inside.

And the right of a brother-in-law, Samiel added, nudging me out of the way and hopping into the portal behind Gabriel.

I looked at J.B., who appeared ready to knock me out if I tried to go before him, and sighed. “Fine, fine. Go on, be a man.”

When they had all gone through I glanced over at Beezle, who was hovering near my right shoulder.

“Do you have some deep-seated need to prove your masculinity by going into the portal ahead of me?”

“Hell, no. I might get hurt,” he said. “Put me in your pocket. I almost fell off last time we went through one of these.”

I tucked Beezle into my inside pocket. Just his horns and his eyes were visible above the lapel of my coat.

“Heigh-ho, silver!” Beezle said.

I stepped into the portal, eyes squeezed tight, and felt the familiar sensation of being squashed into a pancake while traveling at approximately eight million miles an hour. A second later I flew out at the other end, determined not to land in the swamp on my face this time.

I needn’t have worried. We weren’t in the swamp. We were in front of Amarantha’s castle.

“Well, I was right. It did take less time to get here than by car,” I said.

I touched down lightly on the ground and joined the boys, who all stared at the castle. We were not in front of the structure but rather on the opposite side of the moat that surrounded it. The drawbridge was up and everything was weirdly silent. A half-moon shone, leaving way too many shadows.

“This isn’t right,” J.B. finally said, and his voice was barely above a whisper. “This is the time of night when the court is in full swing. It’s usually like a never-ending party.”

I looked up at the catwalk on the outer wall. There were no soldiers patrolling there and no torches lit anywhere that we could see. All was dark and quiet, almost as if the castle had been abandoned.

I expelled a breath. “We’re not going to find out anything just standing here. We’ve got to go in.”

Gabriel and Samiel nodded, but J.B. just stood there, fists clenched.

“J.B.?” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder.

He spoke through gritted teeth. “She is my mother. I hate her more than you can imagine, but she is still my mother.”

And you don’t want to go in there and find her dead, I thought, filling in the blanks. I squeezed his shoulder and made him look at me.

“Whatever is in there, you won’t be alone,” I said.

He nodded tightly, and we all took flight. As we soared over the outer wall and the courtyard I looked down. There were several cars in the courtyard, but they appeared abandoned. Doors were opened, and I thought I might have seen a skeletal hand hanging out of one of the windows, but I didn’t stop to investigate.

We landed a few feet before the large front door. It was ajar, and there was a dark smear on the heavy wood that could have been blood.

The whole place had the unnatural calm that followed postapocalyptic calamity. I half expected rotting zombies to come shambling out of the castle at any minute.

“Does anyone else think it’s a good idea to go home now and pretend that we never saw this?” Beezle said, his head sticking out of my jacket, and his voice seemed unnaturally loud in the extreme quiet.

I patted his horns. “Just make sure you stay in there when the inevitable freaky thing shows up.”

“Don’t need to tell me twice,” Beezle murmured.

Gabriel conjured up a ball of nightfire. It floated above us and ahead, slipping into the crack of the open door.

He followed it silently, pushing the door open farther. The creak of the hinges sounded like an explosion, and we all paused, holding our breath, but nothing roared out of the darkness.

I fell in behind Gabriel, followed by J.B. and Samiel. We were in the receiving foyer, facing the long central hallway of the castle. The frozen knights that lined the walls stood like accusing sentries.

The ball of nightfire floated ahead of us, illuminating dust and cobwebs and the once-gleaming armor of the dead knights. There were more dark streaks on the floor, and rusty-looking splatters on the wall.

None of us spoke. I didn’t know about the others but I was too tense to talk. The air seemed full of menace, and the sensation was not unlike the feeling I had when I entered the Maze. I wondered briefly if Amarantha was dead, and if so, could the horror that lived in the Maze break free?

We passed through the hallway and all of us turned instinctively toward the throne room. No faeries bustled to and fro; no one stood at the door to announce our presence. There was only a set of carved double doors, lit by nightfire and covered in blood.

J.B. pushed open the doors. I felt a little tremor of anticipation. We entered the throne room like four gunslingers looking for a fight. But again, there was no one to greet us.