Black Howl

He landed a few feet away from me. We watched each other without speaking for a few moments.

“Did you know?” I asked.

“Maddy, I’m so sorry…” he began.

“Did you know?” I repeated. “You’re the regional supervisor. Every fated death in this city goes across your desk. Did you know that this was going to happen?”

He stared at me for a minute, then finally said, “Yes.”

It was like the blow had come down all over again, and for a few seconds I couldn’t breathe.

“How could you?” I shouted. “How could you not say anything, not do anything? You knew that Gabriel would die on this night, in my own backyard, and you stood by and let it happen?”

“You know the rules as well as I do,” J.B. said angrily. “We are duty bound not to interfere, no matter what the circumstances. What could you have done if I told you?”

“I wouldn’t have let Gabriel go through that thrice-bedamned portal first!” I screamed. “I would have gone through myself.”

“And left him grieving for you the way you’re grieving for him? Is that really a better option? Besides, there is nothing I can do once it was written down. You should know that better than anyone.”

“Always duty. Always Death,” I said, throwing Amarantha’s words back at him.

J.B.’s jaw tightened. “You should be grateful to me. I volunteered to take this one personally. Otherwise somebody else would have offered him the choice.”

“He didn’t need a choice!” I screamed. Everything that was holding me together was unraveling again. “He was supposed to stay with me! You shouldn’t have taken him to the Door at all!”

“Maddy,” J.B. said, his face shocked. “You can’t mean that. Every soul has the right to a choice.”

“He should have stayed with me,” I said, and my voice cracked. “He should have chosen me.”

J.B. closed the space between us, put his arms around me. All I could think was that there was something not quite right about his embrace. He wasn’t Gabriel.

After a few moments I pushed away. “Go home, J.B.”

“So that’s it?” he said. “After everything we’ve been through this week, all I get is a ‘go home, J.B.’?”

“I’m sorry I’m ungrateful,” I said dully. Ice was closing in on my heart, covering that beating sunstone, making it numb. “I’m sorry I killed your mother, and destroyed your family home. I’m sorry I made you risk your life in a fruitless venture in Azazel’s court that gained us nothing. I’m sorry.”

“Wade is going to bring the cubs in tomorrow,” J.B. said. “Will you be there?”

“Don’t count on me,” I said, and turned away.

He said nothing else. After a few moments I looked back. He was gone, and I was alone with a dark stain in the snow.

I went to bed, but I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t. The sheets smelled of Gabriel. His clothes were hanging in the closet. His spare dress shoes were underneath the chair in the hallway. There were two coffee cups drying in the dish rack.

I lay awake in bed, staring at the ceiling. I wanted to cry. Crying would be a release. But all I could think of was ice, and revenge.

When the sun came up Beezle appeared in the doorway. He hovered there, tentative, unsure of his welcome.

“J.B. called this morning,” Beezle said. “He said that Wade was bringing the cubs into the Agency.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. I rolled to one side so that I wouldn’t have to see Beezle.

“Don’t you want to see if Chloe’s spell will restore their memories?” Beezle asked. “You were the one who found the cubs. You were the one who thought to bring the machines back. Without you, there would be no way to cure them.”

“Yeah,” I said. It was hard to remember why I had cared so much, why I had fought so hard for everything.

There was a flutter of wings and then I felt Beezle’s hands yanking me roughly to face him.

“Get up, Maddy,” Beezle said, and he smacked my cheek with his little hand.

I covered the place where he had hit, shocked.

“This is not you. You don’t lie down and go to sleep. You get up and fight.”

“That’s what Jude said, too.”

“Well, if that redneck werewolf can recognize it, then it must be true.”

I laughed involuntarily at his categorization of Jude as a “redneck werewolf”; then I stopped. It didn’t seem right to laugh.

Beezle looked at me tenderly. All the love that had bound us together for all the years of my life was there in his face. “Life goes on, Maddy. You know that better than anyone. It might be a cliché, but it’s true. You’re still alive. And Gabriel is alive inside you.”

My cell phone rang. I looked at the caller ID. It was Jude, and I knew what he would want from me.

I clicked on and without saying hello I said, “I’ll be there.”

“I knew you would,” he growled.

* * *

Since there were so many cubs, we couldn’t meet in Chloe’s underground laboratory. J.B. made special arrangements for Wade, Jude, and the mothers of all of the children to enter the Agency through the loading dock. They still had to be checked by security, though. No one was taking chances.

I waited outside the large conference room where Chloe had arranged all of the machines in a long row. When the pack came trooping down the hall I caught my breath. I didn’t know what to say to these women, to these mothers.