“Why would anyone take Gabriel through a portal to the queen’s lands?” J.B. asked.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I keep feeling like I’m missing something. There are all these disparate factions floating around causing problems. Any one of them could have taken Gabriel.”
“I still think it was the wolves,” said Beezle.
“I still think you have wolf prejudice,” I replied.
“Why are you defending the wolves?” J.B. asked. “It’s not like you have a relationship with them.”
“Well, I do now, sort of. They said that I was a friend to them and vice versa. Plus, I don’t know—I’ve always kind of liked the wolves. They’re straightforward. They don’t play games like the courts of the vampires or the fallen. With the wolves, what you see is what you get.”
“That doesn’t mean that they weren’t involved in Gabriel’s disappearance,” J.B. said. “Don’t kid yourself. They have an agenda, too. They’re trying to negotiate with Amarantha right now for some ancient lands of theirs that currently belong to her, and they don’t want the faerie court to strike any new deal with Lucifer’s kingdom.”
“Why not?”
“The wolves have a long-standing argument with Lucifer. They don’t want Lucifer to gain any leverage with Amarantha that might affect their land claim.”
“Is there anyone not negotiating with Amarantha right now?” I said, annoyed. “Just how many players are in the pond here?”
“She just signed a new treaty with the vampires regarding right-of-way access, so they’re out of the picture right now,” J.B. said. “Other than that, pretty much everyone is in and out of the court for one reason or another.”
I blew out a breath. “Just why the hell did Lucifer think that I could handle this?”
Beezle and J.B. looked at each other.
“Yes, I know, that’s what you two know-it-alls tried to tell me yesterday. I’ll figure it out. J.B., go home and get some sleep. If you keep doing that to your hair, it’s going to fall out.”
“I’m overwhelmed by your gratitude. ‘Thanks, J.B., for making sure that your mom didn’t send her assassins to remove all my limbs one by one.’”
I kissed him on the cheek. “Thanks, J.B. Now, come back tomorrow morning around ten so you can escort me to the court. Surely she won’t chop off my head on sight if her son is part of my entourage.”
“Don’t count on it,” he said, and disappeared out the front door.
“Can I sleep in my nest?” Beezle asked.
“No,” I said. “You can set something up on my dresser.”
“Your dresser is hard,” he complained.
“So get a pillow,” I replied. “You’re the one who’s always going on about how cold it is outside.”
After about fifteen minutes of grumping and grumbling, I finally got Beezle settled. I collapsed on the bed and closed my eyes in an instant. And when I slept, I dreamed of Gabriel.
It was dark where he was, so dark and cold, a pit of frozen stone. The stone was black as night and shone in the faint gleam that emitted from the top of the pit. Gabriel’s eyes gave off a slight glow from the shadows.
He was naked and shivering, and in the light I could see long welts clotted with blood on his back, his arms, his shoulders. He had only been gone for a little more than a day, but his face had a gaunt, haggard look, as if he hadn’t been eating. Since I couldn’t see any sign of food or water, he probably hadn’t been.
He hunched over his knees, arms wrapped around his legs, his wings enclosing his body in a makeshift blanket. Gabriel was always so calm, so self-assured, and it hurt my heart to see him trembling on the ground like a lost child.
I held my hand out to him, knowing that I could not touch him, that this was only a dream, when suddenly he looked up.
“Madeline?” he said. His face was alight with hope.
“Gabriel,” I replied, and I brushed my hand over his cheek, expecting to feel his skin beneath my fingertips, the dark stubble that grew there. But of course I couldn’t. I wasn’t really there.
“Madeline?” he asked again, and his eyes searched for some sign of me. Disappointment crept over his face.
“I’m here, Gabriel,” I said. “I’m here. I’m coming for you.”
But he dropped his head to his knees. He didn’t see me. He didn’t hear me. I felt a moment of despair. What good was I to him, or to anybody? How had I let this happen in the first place?
Then I realized I could at least try to find out where he was. I drifted upward through the pit. There was a long channel above the hole where Gabriel was held. The channel was far too narrow for Gabriel to fly through, and too smooth to climb. His captors must have found some way to suppress his magic as well, or no prison would be enough to keep him there.
I wondered if they’d simply dropped him into the hole or if they had cared enough about broken bones to lower him gently. Judging from the whip marks on his back, it was probably the former.
I floated through the open hole at the top of the pit and emerged in a cave. There was no sign of Gabriel’s captors, no sign of life of any kind. There was only black volcanic rock and gray sand. I couldn’t smell anything or feel heat or cold, so from my point of view it was a basically a non-descript cave. It could have been anywhere in the world.
I let myself drift along, toes just brushing the fine sand that covered the ground everywhere I looked. After a few minutes I came to the end of the cave. The tunnel turned abruptly and opened out over the edge of a cliff. I went right up to the edge and looked down.
Even though I was some kind of ghost or floating aspect here, I still had a moment of vertigo. The cliff dropped away to a sheer face that fell maybe two hundred feet to a thin creek bed, long empty of water. There was a wide expanse of open plain on the other side of the creek, gray sand and gray sky and clouds exploding with lightning.
I had a foreboding feeling as I looked around this dead place, gray as far as the eye could see. I looked and looked and finally found what I expected.
Far in the distance I could see the clawed outline of a tree, white as bone, scraping its branches like talons across the sky.
“The Forbidden Lands,” I said. It was a place that I had never wanted to see again, the place where Lucifer and the Grigori had imprisoned the nephilim. It was the place where Ramuell had torn out my heart, the place where I had died once—for a little while.
Who had brought Gabriel here and dropped him into that oubliette? If they wanted him for some purpose— as a ransom or a slave—then why leave him here to be forgotten?
Suddenly there was a movement on the plain below. From the right of the cliff that I stood upon came a single individual. At this distance I could detect only the gleam of golden hair and of white wings, marking him of angelic descent.
From the left came a small group, knotted tightly together and moving almost as one body except for the leader. He strode ahead to meet the individual coming from the other direction. All I could see of the leader was that he was tall and horned—that plus the multicolored glob of beings behind him told me that he was a demon.
I needed to get closer and find out who these characters were and if they had anything to do with Gabriel’s kidnapping. I knew that my physical body was not here, and that even if it were here, I could fly. But it still took everything I had to step off the edge of the cliff.
I fell slowly, floating downward like a dandelion seed drifting on the breeze. It seemed to take an eternity before I met the ground. I landed softly in the sand, and my bare feet made no impression. It was only then that I realized I wore nothing but my only white nightgown—a favorite of Gabriel’s—and it wasn’t even what I had actually put on to sleep in. I felt suddenly vulnerable, that if I presented myself like this in the sight of those demons, they would fall upon me and devour me.
But that was absurd. Gabriel couldn’t see me. I was dreaming, or having a vision, but I wasn’t really here. This might be my only chance to find out who took Gabriel, and why, and to try to figure out how to get him back.
I had landed several feet behind the angel. His wings were up and outspread and obscured his face from
