Black Howl

“Kill her,” Amarantha said.

I pushed to my knees as Violet ran toward me with the sword raised. As she did, the castle began to tremble alarmingly, as if an earthquake had struck. Pieces of the ceiling rained to the ground. The magical spell that bound the castle together must have broken completely with Amarantha’s death.

I heard voices coming closer, J.B. and Gabriel, and Wade’s barking. Violet tumbled to the ground as the castle shook, the sword flying free of her hand. I crawled toward it, sickness rising in my throat, my body on fire. The poison was going to kill me before Violet had a chance.

My fingers closed around the sword. Stars filled my eyes and I rolled onto my back, coughing blood. The poison was in my lungs. It was burning me alive.

Violet closed her good hand around my wrist, tried to wrench the sword from me. We must have looked pathetic, two mauled and half-dead creatures wrestling over a sword as the building came down around our ears.

“Kill her!” Amarantha’s soul screamed.

“Shut…up,” I slurred. “I killed you so I wouldn’t have to listen to you anymore.”

Violet slashed at my face with her claws and my cheek split open. I punched her where Samiel had broken her jaw and she rolled away from me, thrashing in pain. A chunk of the ceiling landed on my stomach and all the breath whooshed out of my body.

I rolled over, knocking the rock to the floor, and tried to fly since I couldn’t walk. But I was too tired to hold myself up and I managed to flutter only a few feet before collapsing again. I didn’t know where Violet was.

The floor cracked underneath me. I could barely see now, between the salt burning my eyes and the pain that turned them black. Even the rumbling of the castle seemed a distant thing.

“There, there, you idiot!”

Beezle. That was Beezle.

Hands underneath me, a cold wet nose pressed against my face, my body lifted and slung over a broad shoulder. I smelled apple pie baking, and heard Gabriel murmuring.

Then I felt cold air on my face, and went out.

14

I WOKE IN THE COURTYARD, SORE ALL OVER, GABRIEL’S lips on mine. I opened my eyes and felt everything whole again, although angelic healing doesn’t do anything for dirt and encrusted blood and spider goop all over you.

“I can’t believe you’re kissing me in this state,” I said.

“You have looked worse,” Gabriel said, smiling.

“I find that difficult to believe,” I said.

There was a crack of thunder behind me and I twisted to look at the castle. Or rather, what remained of the castle. It was nothing more than a jumble of stone and mortar now, the broken spell spewing arcs of light into the night sky.

Beezle landed on my chest and examined my face. “How did you manage to make the whole castle fall down, huh, Maddy?”

“She killed my mother,” J.B. said from behind Gabriel.

I sat up more fully, nudged Gabriel aside so I could look at J.B. He had his hands in his pockets and was staring broodily at the remains of his family court.

“I did,” I said steadily. I wouldn’t offer any excuses.

“I knew that you would,” he said. “She wouldn’t stop trying to kill you.”

“I’m sorry that I’m unreasonable about that,” I said, a tad defensive. “But people keep trying to make it a question of them or me.”

“I’m not blaming you,” he said. There was no sorrow in his voice, and his eyes were dry. “I just knew that it would happen, sooner or later.”

“Well, the upside of Destructo-Girl’s actions is that the room full of spiders is destroyed, so we can cross that off our to-do list,” Beezle said.

“And we got Wade back,” I said.

“For which I am heartily grateful, Madeline Black,” said Wade.

He stood next to Samiel, wrapped in Gabriel’s overcoat. He looked a lot thinner than the last time I’d seen him. Exhaustion had etched his face in new lines, and his salt-and-pepper beard was ragged.

“What of the cubs?” Wade asked. “Did you find them as well?”

“Yes,” I said, and explained what had happened. “But we still don’t know how to…fix them.”

I looked at J.B., who turned away from the castle to face Wade. “We’re trying to find a way to heal them, but it’s difficult. We’ve only just determined that it’s their memories that have been taken from them.”

“Yes,” Wade said grimly. “That, I knew.”

“Why didn’t they take yours as well?” I asked.

“Amarantha and Focalor had some other intention for me. They would not reveal it. But they did force me to watch as they tore the first memories from our cubs.”

“What are they doing with the memories?” I asked.

“They’re selling them,” Wade said. “To vampires.”

“Selling them?” I said blankly. “Why?”

“Human sensation is like a drug to these creatures. They feed off it. When a vampire kills a human he experiences all the moments of that human’s life before death. Many vampires become addicted to the thrill of memory. But it is impractical to kill humans all the time.”

“It attracts too much attention,” I said.

“And depletes your food supply,” added Beezle.

“So Amarantha and Focalor decided to get together and sell memories to vampires? How did they come up with the technology for extracting the memories in the first place?” I asked.