I thought back to something Gabriel had said to me once. “I thought that some portals were naturally occurring.”
“Yes, but not in this plane. There has never been a naturally occurring portal on this mortal earth.”
“So it’s got to be under the control of a master, then,” I said thoughtfully.
Nathaniel’s lips pressed together. “Yes, it would have to be, if it were there.”
“Oh, it’s there,” I said, getting annoyed. “In fact, this probably explains how Gabriel disappeared. He stepped into the portal by accident.”
“In that case, why has he not returned?”
I glared at him. “Apparently when they were handing out the good stuff they forgot to give you brains to put inside that pretty head. How the hell should I know why he hasn’t returned? I’m assuming it’s because there is either something insanely dangerous on the other side of that portal or it’s a trap. Or both.”
Nathaniel gave me a long-suffering look. “Madeline, why would someone place an invisible portal—not that I believe in such a thing—in a throughway for mortals? Anyone could accidentally enter it.”
I grabbed his wrist and dragged him in the direction of the portal. I was totally fed up with his if-I-can’t-see-it-I-don’t-believe-it attitude. Why the hell would I make up a portal in the middle of the alley? To get attention from him? I think not.
The portal was several feet inside the alley and close to the T-junction. As I approached the corner, I slowed, trying to remember exactly where it was located. Nathaniel smirked at me as I cast out my net again, this time trying to see two planes at once—the physical and the magical. It was less of a struggle to cast the spell a second time, but much more difficult to see the physical location of the portal behind the magical net. The real world was an indistinct blur, a vague procession of washed color and shadow.
I inched closer to the location of the portal, shuffling my feet in tiny steps. Nathaniel huffed out an impatient snort behind me. I would have made a smart remark at him but I needed all of my energy focused on the magical net. The portal had started trying to pull me in again, and I was exerting a great deal of effort keeping my power outside of the vortex.
When I was only about a foot and a half from the portal, I pointed my finger right at it and then dropped the net.
“There. It’s right there. If you concentrate, you can see it,” I said, throwing his words back at him.
Nathaniel looked at me doubtfully, but he got a steady, focused look, like he was searching for evidence of magic. I could see when he found the portal. His eyebrows shot up to his hairline.
“Extraordinary,” he murmured.
“Don’t apologize for doubting me or anything,” I muttered.
He moved closer to the portal, and it seemed that he was feeling the edges of the vortex with his fingers. I wondered that the portal didn’t try to suck his magic inside, the way it did for me. Maybe he was more powerful than I, or maybe he just had more control.
“What are you doing?” I asked curiously as he continued to move around the portal, seeming to examine it from every angle.
“Trying to determine the master of the portal,” he said, not looking at me.
“Do portals have makers’ marks?”
“Of a kind,” Nathaniel said. “Most beings will leave a kind of magical signature or a sense of their power behind with their casting. But the most extraordinary fact about this portal . . .”
“Other than the fact that it’s invisible and it’s not supposed to be there?”
“. . . is that it seems to have been wiped clean of all traces of power.”
I frowned. “But wouldn’t the process of clearing the power signature leave a trace, too? I mean, it had to have been wiped clean by magical means.”
“It would seem logical, but no. There are certain kinds of spells that can ensure that no trace is left behind.”
“So we’ve got a portal with no way of knowing who cast it or why. That’s just swell,” I muttered.
I drifted closer to the portal, frustrated by everything that had happened and the total lack of leads.
“. . . ddy!”
A voice, so small and faint I thought that I had imagined it.
“Maddy!”
I stood still, listening. It sounded tinny, like it was coming through a pipe, very far away.
“Maddy!”
“Beezle?” I called. “Beezle, is that you?”
No response.
“Madeline?” Nathaniel said, watching me with concern. “What is it?”
“Quiet,” I said. “I heard Beezle.”
“I heard nothing.”
“Maddy!”
There, again, first quiet, then louder. Where was it coming from? Was Beezle trapped somewhere in the alley? Was he hurt?
“MADDY! GET AWAY!”
There. It was clear as a bell that time. I stared at the portal.
“He’s there,” I said to Nathaniel.
“Who is where?” he said.
“Beezle is inside the portal,” I said, and I was sure of it, and I knew that it didn’t matter how it had to be done but I was going to get him out.
I walked toward the portal, as if in a trance, my heart beating faster and faster until it was galloping in my chest. Beezle. I could get Beezle back.
“Madeline!” Nathaniel cried, and he sounded alarmed.
I felt his arm around my wrist, grasping, trying to yank me away.
I pulled my arm free, turned back to the portal. Nathaniel grabbed me again, twisted me around to face him.
“Madeline, what in the name of all the gods are you doing? You cannot just walk into that portal without knowing what may be on the other side.” He shook me a little, his hands on my shoulders. “How am I to face Lord Azazel if you mindlessly walk into harm?”
I pushed his hands from my shoulders, furious. “Don’t treat me like a child. You’re only worried about how Azazel would punish you if I’m killed. Beezle is in there, and I need to find him.”
Nathaniel’s eyes were cold and furious. “Think, Madeline. The gargoyle may not be inside the portal. It may be a trap that is laid for you.”
“I don’t care,” I said. “If he’s there, I have to help him.”
“You fool,” he spat. “There are terrible things that you cannot even conceive of in other worlds. And contrary to what you may think, I would not relish the thought of your being devoured by a monster, or captured by a demon tribe.”
My face reddened. Even if I didn’t like Nathaniel, I should probably stop acting like he had no feelings. “All right, maybe you don’t want me to get hurt. But if there is a possibility, even the tiniest possibility, that Beezle is in there, I have to go to him. I have to get him back.”
He’s the only creature in the world who has ever really loved me,
I thought.
Nathaniel looked at me a moment. “You are going to go in there no matter what I say, are you not?”
I nodded.
“Then take my hand,” he said.
There was a time when I would have done anything not to touch him. But for this, for Beezle, I put my hand in his willingly.
We stepped into the portal, and as we did I heard Beezle’s voice screaming, “Maddy! NO! IT’S A TRAP!”
Well, of course,
I thought. I knew it was a trap. I just didn’t care.
And then the portal was pulling us through, and I was in agony. I had traveled via portal a few times to my father’s house, and it was like having my head squeezed between two cinder blocks. Nathaniel gripped my hand tighter. My eyes felt like they were going to burst from my skull, and a moment later, we were out.
I felt Nathaniel’s grip on my fingers loosen and I landed flat on my face in something soft and wet and foul smelling. I gagged and lifted my head, spitting out mud.
“Is there some reason why you can’t follow the most basic of instructions? What don’t you understand about, ‘Maddy, no, stop, it’s a trap’?”
I wiped mud from eyes, pushed myself back to my knees, and looked for the source of that very familiar and beloved voice.
Beezle was inside a tiny metal cage on a little grassy hillock about ten feet away from me. He didn’t look much worse for the wear, but he scowled at me ferociously.
“Your gratitude is overwhelming,” I said, picking myself up from the muck and looking around.
We seemed to have landed in a swamp. I stood ankle deep in rushes and lily pads, and enormous mossy trees dangled their branches over the water. The air was gray and misty and filled with a sulfurous odor. After a few moments my eyes began to water.
“And what did you bring him for?” Beezle said, jerking his thumb toward Nathaniel.
I looked in the direction that Beezle had pointed and realized that Nathaniel had flown out of the portal. He hung just above the water, angelic white wings outspread, not a speck of mud on him.
“I hate you,” I said, and the bastard had the audacity to smirk.
I began to slog toward the shore and the little cage in which Beezle was trapped. Nathaniel fluttered ahead of me and landed next to Beezle’s cage, examining it carefully.
“So where’s the big reveal? How come you were so all fired up that I shouldn’t come and get you?” I said.
Beezle sighed, closed his eyes for a moment, and pointed behind me. “Because of that.”
As he said it, I became aware of fine earthquake tremors in the ground, and the water lapping against the backs of my legs. The scent of sulfur grew stronger, and Nathaniel stood up, eyes hard and watchful.
I huffed out a deep breath. “It’s something huge, isn’t it?”
Beezle nodded. “Yup.”
There was a sound of several limbs splashing in the water. “Is it all squishy and tentacly?”
“Yup.”
“I hate my life,” I said, and as I turned I conjured a ball of nightfire and threw it.
I had a sense of something massive, an enormous twostory shadow that trembled and pulsed and oozed, and then the ball of nightfire hit it and it opened its enormous maw and howled in rage.
Its howl created a gale force wind that tossed me back several feet. I landed on the hillock beside Beezle’s cage. He seemed nonplussed.
“I think that just made it madder,” he said.
I pushed up to my elbows as the creature came forward, sniffing for me with a long, elephantine nose. It had several small eyes but the orbs were covered in a milky white film—the creature was blind. The nightfire did not seem to have damaged it in any way.
“Do you think you could manage to defeat this thing quickly so we can get home?” Beezle said. “I never did get my doughnut.”
“Only you would think of doughnuts at a time like this.” I came unsteadily to my feet and pushed out my wings. “Where’s Nathaniel?”
“Got tossed that way when the monster started yelling,” Beezle said, pointing behind him. “Not such a smartypants with those wings now, is he?”
There was no sign of the angel. Behind the hillock was a tangle of trees and darkness, surrounded by mist.
“How come your cage didn’t get tossed, too?” I asked.
“It’s attached to the ground. Um, maybe you want to direct your attention to the giant monster squishing toward us? It seems to have caught your scent.”
“Yup, right on that,” I said.
I tried to get a good look at the creature as I readied my magic. The shifting clouds of mist made it difficult to get a clear view. There was zero sense in trying to overpower it—the creature was the size of a building and had about twenty tentacles with which to grab and crush me. I couldn’t blind it, because the monster was already blind.
“Any idea what this thing’s weakness is?” I asked Beezle.
He put a claw on his lower lip like he was thinking. “I’m not sure, but I think most monsters dislike fire.”
“Fire. Right. I don’t know how to make regular fire.”
Beezle snorted. “Are you sure about that? You do have a heartstone now.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Umm, heartstone? Power of the sun inside you? Did you get denser while I was away?”
The monster squished closer. I tried not to gag at its scent. If I still had the abilities that I’d had when Evangeline possessed me, I’d be able to take down this creature without blinking.
I knew that I had a heartstone, but I didn’t see how that would help me. I didn’t know half of what I was capable of doing. If Gabriel were with me, he could help me. But Gabriel was gone, and Nathaniel had disappeared, and the only being around to help me was a snorting little gargoyle who seemed to think that I was acting dumb by not using a power that I didn’t even know I had.
Beezle huffed. “Whatever you’re going to do, I’d advise you to do it now.”
“Better to try than to be eaten, I guess.”