Black Spring

I wanted to shout at him, but I was afraid I would distract him and then Michael would move in for the kill.

In the dark it was hard to make out one from the other as limbs punched and kicked and blood splattered. There was just enough light to tell that the fighting was savage and bloodthirsty. Jude wasn’t going to just give in, and Michael was motivated by the contemplation of vengeance for more than two thousand years.

Suddenly it was over. I couldn’t really see how it happened, but Michael was on his back and Jude was at his throat with the knife. Jude’s face was visible in the glare of the streetlamp from the alley, and I saw him hesitate.

“It would be a mercy,” Michael said, and I realized something then. He’d been cast out by the board. He was no longer welcome home. He was just like Lucifer.

“I don’t see why I should be merciful to you,” Jude said, and he stood.

Michael rose to his feet, his white angel’s wings covered in blood. He was no longer powerful, no longer the first of the host. He was fallen. He looked at all of us, and I could see the flame in his eyes was dimming.

He said not another word, but took to the air, and disappeared in the night.

“He will go to the Grigori,” Nathaniel said.

“Fine with me,” I said. “They can have him.”

Jude’s face was impassive, half in shadow and half in light. “It is over, then. I must find Wade and tell him that the threat to the pack is gone.”

“I understand,” I said. “Go.”

He turned into a wolf and leapt over the fence, racing away. I think he needed not only to see Wade, but to run fast and free for as long as possible. He needed to outrun the grief in his heart.

Beezle sighed. “At least there isn’t another dead body to get rid of.”

I wondered whether Nathaniel kept tossing the bodies in the same place, and whether the police were going to start to wonder if there was a serial killer in our neighborhood. Then I realized that with all the other stuff that happened in our neighborhood, a serial killer was probably the least of their worries.

“What about the shapeshifter?” I asked Beezle. Adam was starting to fuss in my arms.

The shifter had stood perfectly still throughout the battle between Michael and Jude. He was still posed like a statue at the edge of the yard. I wanted to approach him, but not while I was holding Adam.

“I’ll take him,” Nathaniel said, lifting the baby away from me.

“I’ll go with you,” Beezle said, knowing what I was thinking.

“And what will you do if he attacks?” I asked skeptically.

“Slay him with my wit,” Beezle said. “Besides, I think he’s broken. He hasn’t moved at all.”

I cautiously approached the shifter. The shifter’s eyes registered my presence, but that was all.

This was the thing that had broken through the defenses of my house. It had taken my guise and committed more than one murder. And yet I felt sorry for it. The shifter had no will of its own. Its will came from his master, and now his master was gone.

“Did Alerian make you?” I asked.

“Yes,” it said. “And forgot me, for many years. Then Michael found me, and gave me purpose again.”

The shifter was too powerful a weapon to anyone who found and controlled it. I couldn’t let it leave, and I didn’t have the stomach to master it myself.

“Give me your hand,” I said to it.

It put its palm in mine, willingly, trustingly. I sent a little questing thread of magic from me into its body, looking for the place where his magic was born. I found it where his heart should have been, and instead there was a changing cloud, a little ball of power that could become whatever its master wished it to be.

I sent my magic inside that cloud, untangling the knots that held the shifter together. The air filled with little droplets of silver water, like the shifting surface of Alerian’s eyes. The water floated up and dissolved as little by little the shifter disappeared.

After a few moments, it was all over.

“Well,” Beezle said. “Yet another unexpected ending. You’ve hardly set anything on fire for days. Are you feeling all right? Do you want to burn the shed down just to get it out of your system?”

I laughed and walked toward the house. Nathaniel and Samiel had returned inside with Adam. “I think we should buy a new place. Too many bad things have happened here. And maybe we’ll be able to keep the address away from Jack Dabrowski this time.”

“I doubt it,” Beezle said. “But we can have a new house if you want to.”

“I want to,” I said as we climbed the stairs back up to my apartment. Nathaniel passed Adam back to me, and I smiled down at him.

“You know what I want?” Beezle asked.

“What?”

“Chinese takeout.”

“Pork dumplings?” I said, picking up the phone.

“Pork dumplings!” he said, raising his fist in the air.

I looked down into the face of my child, my beautiful Adam, and was grateful. Grateful for him, and grateful for the man who had fathered him as well as the one who would be his father. I was grateful. We were safe. We were home.

I picked up the phone, and placed the order.

Acknowledgments