come here because I need your help.”
He quirked one golden eyebrow at me in question.
“You ask why Gabriel hasn’t healed me. Gabriel has gone missing, and I need your help to find him.”
“And why should I assist you in finding the thr . . . Gabriel?” he amended, but Nathaniel said the name like it was poison dripping from his tongue. “His life is already forfeit since he has abandoned his duties to you.”
“He didn’t abandon me,” I said angrily. “He wouldn’t. There is nobody in this world who is more devoted to my safety than Gabriel.”
Nathaniel spread his hands wide. “Then where is he?”
“I don’t know,” I said, my shoulders slumping. “I think he was taken.”
I explained about the various incidents in the alley, from our following of the power signature to my attack. I left out the part where I had accidentally reestablished relations with the wolves, and pretended I didn’t suspect the identity of my attacker. There was no need for Nathaniel to know anything about Samiel right now.
He looked thoughtful, something I hadn’t expected. “How could the . . . Gabriel have been taken without your knowledge when he stood in such close proximity to you?”
“Exactly,” I said. “Beezle thinks it was the wolves.”
“Beezle?” Nathaniel asked.
“My gargoyle,” I said, waving my hands impatiently. “Do you have any way of tracking power signatures? Gabriel could do it, but he didn’t show me how.”
Nathaniel’s nostrils flared and his lips thinned. “That ability appears to be the exclusive provenance of the children of Lucifer.”
I could tell that it cost him something to say this. He wasn’t the type who enjoyed admitting weakness. But while it was an interesting fact for me to tuck away for later (being a child of Lucifer, I theoretically could manifest this power at some point) it didn’t really help me with my immediate problem—finding Gabriel.
“Besides,” Nathaniel pointed out, “if the kidnappers did not use magic, there would be no power signature to trace.”
“You think something swooped in from the sky and plucked Gabriel out of the alley without me noticing?” I said doubtfully.
“You have not yet visited the courts of other fallen,” Nathaniel said grimly. “There are horrors there that you cannot comprehend.”
Horrors, I thought. Once more, a warning of horrors that I could not understand. I felt a prickling on the back of my neck. Nathaniel’s eyes widened at something behind me.
“Down!” he shouted, his hand reaching across the table as something smashed into the dining room window and slammed into me.
6
THE BREATH LEFT MY LUNGS IN A TREMENDOUS whoosh as something heavy crashed through the chair, into my back and then fell to the floor with a thunk. The apartment immediately started to fill with smoke. I shook my head, trying to collect my thoughts.
A firm hand grasped my elbow and yanked me up from the table.
“You have to get out of here,” Nathaniel said, dragging me away from the table and the source of the smoke.
I shook my arm free from his grip. “No, I have to get whatever is smoking out of my apartment before the whole building blows up.”
I couldn’t see his expression but I’m sure he disapproved. I dropped to the floor, coughing and covering my mouth and nose with the neckline of my T-shirt.
A hissing noise emanated from just behind the chair I had been sitting in. I squirmed along the floor on my belly, feeling in front of me for the source of the noise. My vision was only slightly clearer than it had been when I stood up. The smoke was quickly filling the room. I could make out the vague shapes of furniture but nothing more.
“Open a window!” I shouted to Nathaniel. He didn’t respond, so I assumed he had found the nearest exit and gotten out of the building. Which is what a smart person would do. But still, not very gallant of him, considering he was engaged to me.
The hissing noise grew closer. I belly-crawled toward it, fingers of my right hand outstretched, the other hand holding my T-shirt over my nose.
There was a blast of cold air on my back and the smoke seemed to lift temporarily. I glanced behind me and could make out the shape of Nathaniel in the front living room, opening all of the windows. Huh. So he hadn’t left me, after all.
I turned back toward my goal, and saw that the smoke had dissipated just enough for me to see the source of the noise. I crawled toward it and carefully examined it without picking it up. It looked like a medium-sized black bowling ball with gray smoke emitting from a hole in the top. There did not seem to be any kind of incendiary device on it but I wasn’t about to take chances.
I came to a crouch and then carefully lifted the ball into my arms. It is an unfortunate testament to my total lack of fitness that despite my newfound angelic strength, the ball felt heavy to me.
I began to move through the house toward the back door. A moment later, Nathaniel was next to me, taking the ball from my arms.
“Where?” he asked shortly.
“Down the back stairs, to the yard and into my rain barrel,” I said. I was embarrassed that I was huffing and puffing, but it wasn’t all laziness. The smoke had obviously affected my puny mortal lungs more than it had affected his.
Nathaniel disappeared into the kitchen, streaming a trail of smoke behind him. I walked through the apartment opening windows and letting the frigid November air inside. Luckily, we hadn’t gotten into a period of deep frost so there should just be a thin coating of ice on the rain barrel. I just hoped that whatever was inside that ball would respond the way smoking things usually responded to water—by getting doused. If the item was magical, there was a good chance that it might blow up when it hit the water. You could never tell.
When I’d finished opening the windows and the air had cleared somewhat, I went back to the dining area to survey the damage. The ball had completely smashed the window—no surprise there—and rendered the back rest of the chair I had been sitting in to splinters. I put my right foot down and felt something sting. I stood on the opposite foot and looked at the oozing wound on the sole.
“Well, of course there would be glass on the floor, dummy,” I muttered to myself. I hopped down the hall to the bathroom and sat down on the toilet. There was a small sliver of glass embedded in the ball of my foot. “I don’t know how I survived this long on my own wits.”
I reached down to the cabinet underneath the sink, pulled out my nail kit and collected the tweezers. Then I grabbed some rubbing alcohol and cotton balls, all while twisting around on the seat with my right leg crossed over my left and my right foot dripping blood on the blue tile floor. I dumped a little alcohol on the cotton ball and swabbed the tip of the tweezers. Then I added some more alcohol to the other side of the ball and applied it to the wound. I hissed as the alcohol stung.
You would think that after nearly being killed by a nephilim I would have more tolerance for pain.
I bent over my foot and began the business of trying to extract the glass. I grabbed at the sliver with the tweezers and pulled, whimpering as it came free from my flesh.
“I am so not cut out for a life of adventure,” I muttered, wiping more alcohol on the wound to make sure it wouldn’t get infected. My eyes teared up as the alcohol did its thing.
I finished bandaging the cut and stood up to test my weight on it. I would survive. A moment later, Nathaniel slammed the remains of my back door. I stepped gingerly into the hallway to meet him and had to cover my mouth with my hand to stifle my laughter.
Well, I’d wondered if he’d ever get rumpled, and now he was. He looked kind of like that cartoon coyote after the dynamite has gone off in his face.
