Black Spring

“It’s the only reason he’s stayed with me all these years,” I told Daharan.

“It’s been ages since you’ve cooked anything,” Beezle said. “It’s always ‘apocalypse this, apocalypse that’ with you.”

“You could learn to take care of your own meals, gargoyle,” Nathaniel said, frowning.

“No, no,” I said. “You don’t want to see the state of the kitchen after Beezle’s been cooking.”

“She’s still upset about the s’mores incident,” Beezle said, sotto voce.

“The fire department was called,” I said.

Beezle looked affronted. “Every time you step out the front door, a city block burns down, and you’re still angry because I got a little smoke in the kitchen?”

“The microwave was destr—Never mind,” I said, because the others were staring at us. “So we’ve got two problems. First, find the shifter. Second, find a safe haven for the pack.”

“I am not certain it is a wise idea for the pack to gather together in one place,” Nathaniel said slowly.

“It would make it too easy to get rid of us,” Jude agreed.

It was a sign of how much things had changed that Jude and Nathaniel behaved civilly to each other. Time was they could barely stand to be in the same city, much less the same room. Nathaniel had changed, and not just physically. Jude was perceptive enough to pick up on that.

There was something else, too—a growing feeling that all of us in this room were linked together, and that our problems were greater than any one enemy. Ever since Alerian had risen from the lake like some Cthulhu-nightmare, I’d sensed something huge was approaching, some fate I would not be able to escape. All the crises I’d averted seemed merely a prologue. There was a larger plan at work, something that had been put in motion long before I was even born.

It was no stretch of the imagination to picture Lucifer and Puck and Alerian as major players in whatever was coming. Still, there was something I was missing. Some hand moved in the shadows, making all the puppets dance to its tune.

“Are you going to join the rest of us on Earth?” Beezle asked loudly. “Or are you going to sit there with a blank look for the rest of the day?”

“I was thinking,” I said.

“I could make a comment about burning, but I will withhold it. It’s too easy.”

“Your restraint is admirable,” I said dryly.

“Look, the Avengers are assembled,” Beezle said. “Don’t you want to develop a plan of action? Or at least charge out the door blindly the way you usually do?”

“Yeah,” I said, shaking off the lingering sense of approaching doom. “Jude, I don’t suppose you can track the scent of that shifter?”

He shook his head. “He’s like no shapeshifter I have ever seen. Baraqiel’s powers were startling enough, but they could at least be explained away by his parentage. Anything spawned from Lucifer is bound to have unusual abilities. But this shifter . . . he doesn’t just look like whoever he’s pretending to be. He is that person. He behaves like them; he smells like them. He is whoever he pretends to be.”

“How can that be?” I asked. “How can the magic leave no trace?”

“It did leave a trace,” Beezle said. “I could see through it to the essence underneath.”

“Until you patent those gargoyle-o-vision glasses, that doesn’t do us a lot of good,” I said. “Wait a second. You could see down to the shifter’s essence.”

Beezle had a speculative look on his face. “Gargoyle-o-vision. That has possibilities. I wonder why I didn’t think of that before.”

“Beezle! Focus! Did you see the shifter’s real identity or not?”

“Yeah, but it won’t help you,” Beezle said. “The essence didn’t look like anything concrete.”

“What do you mean?”

Beezle looked thoughtful. “It was almost like there wasn’t a real person—or a real creature—underneath the mask of Jude. The essence was kind of fuzzy and out of focus.”

“Like whatever it was had no real personality or identity other than what it took on?” I said. “It would have been born from something, right? Presumably another shapeshifter.”

Daharan broke in, his face angrier than I’d ever seen it. “Such things are not unheard of. There were three like this, long ago. But they were destroyed. I told him to destroy them. I watched it happen.”

“Told who to destroy them?” Beezle asked.

Daharan looked at me. “Alerian.”

As Daharan said his name I felt, briefly, that sense of the ocean closing over me. “So it’s nothing to do with Jude’s past at all, but Alerian’s.”

Daharan shook his head. “I can see that the pack’s troubles are tied to Jude’s history, although I cannot see precisely how. The shapeshifter is merely an agent working another’s will.”

“Working Alerian’s will?” Nathaniel asked.

“Alerian was asleep for hundreds of years,” I said. “The pack’s troubles are recent. Unless he left an ancient Post-it with instructions, it’s unlikely he’s behind this.” I looked to Daharan for confirmation.

My uncle nodded. “I believe Alerian has an agenda of his own, but I don’t believe it has anything to do with these wolves.”

“But the shapeshifter is connected to Alerian,” Jude said.