Black Night

I ran down the alley in the other direction, toward Belmont, calling Gabriel’s name. How could he just disappear into thin air like that? We’d been standing there with the wolves. If something had happened to Gabriel, one of us should have noticed.

“He wouldn’t leave me,” I repeated, as I ran around the block, my head twisting this way and that. “Gabriel! Gabriel!”

I must have appeared a little unhinged because a couple of new moms walking their babies in the winter sunshine pulled their $800 Bugaboos out of my way as I went by.

“You’re frightening the natives,” Beezle said.

I stopped and glared down at him as I came back to the mouth of the alley. “Maybe they’re scared of the ugly little monster hanging out of my coat.”

Beezle looked affronted. “I’ll have you know I am a very handsome gargoyle.”

“According to wh—” I said, and then the breath was ripped from my body as something very large and very heavy crashed into me.

My attacker and I careened into the alley and smashed into a metal Dumpster. I cried out in pain as a protruding piece of metal pierced through my coat and into my back. Hot blood ran down my spine as I was punched in the face again and again by a heavy fist and I was nearly blinded by pain.

I didn’t have time to think, to try to fight back. I had an impression of boundless strength holding me down, muscled bare arms, hot breath panting, mad green eyes . . . and wings. White feathers fell all around us as I tried to push with my hands, kick with my legs, to snap with my teeth, anything. But I could barely see; I could hardly breathe. Blood ran into my eyes as I was hit again and again without pause.

I tried to think, tried to focus my magic. I had to get this monster off me before he beat me to death. My magic flickered, then roared to life inside me. I didn’t have the time or the inclination to focus it into something like nightfire. I just let the magic move through me, up and out, and have its own way.

There was an explosion of power that sucked the breath from my lungs, a burst of dazzling light like a firework. My attacker was thrown from my body and away like a cannonball, shooting through the air and out of sight. I tried to get a good look at him, but my eyes were stinging from blood and sweat and I had no clearer impression than before.

I felt like someone had pounded me all over with a meat mallet, especially my face. I shifted my jaw and to my horror felt a couple of loosened teeth on the left side in the place where I had been hit repeatedly.

I rolled to my side, slowly and painfully, and coughed out some blood.

“Fantastic,” I muttered. “This day just can’t get any better.”

Then I remembered that Beezle had been in my pocket. I patted the place where I normally carried him and felt nothing but wool and lint. “Oh, gods. Beezle.”

I forced myself to sit up, although as soon as I did I felt dizzy. I tried to focus my bleary eyes around the alley and found that I could see if I held my sleeve to my bleeding forehead. There was a small gray lump a few feet away from me, and it looked like Beezle, and it looked like he was breathing.

“Coming to getcha, Beezle,” I said, and flopped over to my belly. Walking was absolutely out of the question, so I crawled to him, pulling my legs (which did not want to bend or function in any normal way) behind me like a slug as I heaved forward on my elbows.

My face throbbed with pain as I reached Beezle. I picked him up with one hand and lightly patted his cheek with the other.

“Beezle, come on, wake up,” I said, breathing shallowly. Everything hurt, and I didn’t know if my attacker would come back. I had to get up, get away, but vigorous movement did not appear to be in my future.

Beezle’s eyelids fluttered, and he sat up in my palm, rubbing a bump on his head with one clawed hand.

“What happened? Did we get hit by a tractor trailer?”

I kissed his forehead. Beezle might be a grumpy pain in the ass most of the time, but he was my grumpy pain in the ass and I loved him.

“I think,” I said, remembering mad green eyes, “that we got hit by Samiel.”

“Samiel, huh?” Beezle said, and he seemed to focus on my face for the first time. “When you make an enemy, Maddy, you do it right. You look like you got pounded in the face by a hammer.”

I shuddered to think what I looked like. I never thought I was a great beauty to begin with, but I was sure that getting punched numerous times wasn’t going to do anything for my dating life. I pillowed my head on my arms and breathed through my mouth. It hurt to move. It hurt to think.

I must have zoned out for a few minutes, because the next thing I knew, Beezle was hovering just above my ear.

“Earth to Maddy! You are lying in the middle of an alley and could get run over at any second,” he shouted.

I rolled over to my back and whimpered. “I’m not sure getting run over at this point would make that much of a difference.”

“Why haven’t any cars come through this alley, though?” Beezle said thoughtfully. “We’ve been here for a while, finding werewolf bits and getting beaten up.”

I knew that Beezle was saying something important, but I couldn’t quite grasp the thread of it. It was weird that nobody had entered the alley, or seen me getting the crap pounded out of me. It was weird that nobody had seen the werewolf getting killed, or called the police when a bunch of suspicious characters had hung around the murder scene for a while in the middle of a weekday morning. This was important. I had to remember it so I could think about it later, when I didn’t have forty anvils pressing on my brain.