Black Night Read Online Free PDF

managed to catch you and that foolish human unawares. You should show me more respect, sister. I know something that you do not.”
    “I find that extremely difficult to believe.”
    “I know what slaughtered the wolf. I know what hunts you. I know secrets that you cannot even begin to fathom.”
    I tried not to show it, but I was definitely interested. I wanted to know what had happened to that wolf.
    “If you’re talking about Samiel, you’re not telling me anything new.”
    “There are things worse than a nephilim’s child. Horrors that you cannot comprehend. But I know. I know of matters that the lords of the Grigori themselves do not know.” The pupils of his eyes grew thinner in his excitement. “I will make you respect me before you die.”
    I am not afraid of death. You can’t be afraid of death when you do my job. But I did not want to die screaming at the hands of a demon. And as I thought that, I felt something rise up inside of me, and I knew that my magic had only been sleeping awhile. Then I heard a gurgling yell.
    Antares looked away from me for a moment, and I pushed that magic up, up to the tips of my fingers still planted on his chest. Electricity crackled where I touched.
    He turned his face back to me. I smiled and said, “Boo.”
    Then I let loose the magic, and it surged through me and into Antares, blue fire that blasted him away from me. I heard him screaming in pain as he was launched several blocks away.
    My wings having reappeared along with my powers, I fluttered up from the ground and looked around. Antares had disappeared. This was not unusual. It was a neat little magic trick that he had inherited from his mother. It generally followed a battle in which he had a lot of woundlicking to do.
    Beezle popped out of my pocket and glared up at me. “You kept me in there on purpose.”
    “Absolutely. I didn’t want Antares to turn you into gargoyle bits.”
    “I can handle that powerless fool,” he said indignantly.
    I stroked his head soothingly. “Yes, I’m very unreasonable. I just don’t know what I would do without you.”
    Beezle tried not to look pleased and failed.
    There was a groan from nearby, and I looked around the backyard. J.B. was lying facedown in my fallow vegetable garden. He had been wearing a puffy green ski jacket, and the back of the jacket had been scorched away by the bolt. The garment hung in blackened ribbons from his shoulders. I could see long shiny welts on his back where the magic had burned through his clothing.
    I rushed to his side as he attempted to turn over. Beezle emerged from my pocket and flapped around us like a bossy mosquito.
    “Don’t turn him that way. You’ll get dirt on the burns,” he said.
    “I think I can handle this without instruction,” I said, annoyed.
    Kneeling in the dirt, I helped J.B. to sit up. His face was scraped and bruised from the impact with the ground.
    “Was there a tornado?” he asked, wincing in pain as I helped him to his feet.
    “A tornado named Antares,” I said grimly.
    “Where are the others?”
    “I don’t know,” I said, and tried not to worry about Gabriel. Surely he’d just been delayed at the crime scene with Baraqiel. Antares’s henchmen were no match for a half nephilim, whatever my deluded brother might think.
    J.B. leaned heavily on my shoulders and we hobbled toward my back porch. He negotiated the three wooden steps very slowly.
    “I don’t think we can get to the second floor like this,” I said, my head spinning. The loss of blood and the shock of my earlier fall from the sky finally caught up with me. I sat down on the top step and J.B. collapsed beside me. We leaned on each other like two drunks, both of us panting from exertion.
    “You need an elevator,” J.B. said.
    “She needs help from that useless devil, is what she needs,” Beezle said, fluttering around my head anxiously. “He could heal her in a trice if only he were where he was supposed to be.”
    “You don’t