To think she had almost believed that things were going to be all right.
Her mama and daddy always said she was a damn fool.
Remy knew this place.
He was standing naked atop one of the many spires surging up from the Kingdom of Heaven, staring out over the resplendent City of Light.
He had buried the memory of how beautiful it was—before the war—but the Seraphim had found it.
Saved it.
Cherished it.
This was where he wished to return.
This was what he had been denied.
Something passed overhead, momentarily covering Remy in a blanket of cold shadow. He turned his gaze skyward, at the awesome form gliding above him on wings of gold.
“I think we need to talk,” he called out, and the figure banked to the right, then dropped from the sky, hurtling straight for Remy.
Remy dropped to the base of the spire, dangerously close to the edge. Carefully he pulled himself away, eyes locked on the towers below, wondering about his fate should he fall from such a great height in this strange, dreamlike state.
From behind him, the Seraphim laughed, a joyless sound, bitter and angry.
Remy rose to his feet and turned to address his angelic nature. “All right, you’re pissed; I get it,” he said.
The Seraphim studied him with cold, emotionless eyes. The angel was wearing his armor of war, shined to a glistening brilliance, looking as though it were forged from the sun itself.
Remy remembered that armor, before its radiance was dulled by the blood of his brothers.
“You shouldn’t be here,” the Seraphim growled menacingly.
“You’re probably right,” Remy replied. “So you can probably guess how bad the situation is.”
The angel tilted his head to one side, a smile cutting across his perfect features.
“You fear the Shaitan,” he stated.
“We should all fear the Shaitan,” Remy retorted. “Born from the darkness that was everything before His light chased it away. They were too monstrous . . . too dangerous to even be considered.”
“There is only one,” the Seraphim spoke.
“For now.”
“Kill it,” the Seraphim said with a smile.
“You know that isn’t possible,” Remy said, making the angel smile all the wider. His teeth were incredibly white, and appeared sharp.
Did I really look like that once? he wondered, transfixed by the sight of his angelic persona, absent of any humanity.
“Weak and pathetic,” the Seraphim stated.
“Yeah,” Remy agreed. “You’re probably right . . . but I’m not sure how even you’d do against the Shaitan.”
“Why are you here?” he asked.
Remy considered his answer a moment, then decided to be as honest as he could. “I’m afraid.”
The Seraphim laughed. “Of course you are.”
“I’m afraid of what Malachi has up his sleeve. I’m afraid that once the Shaitan are born, we won’t be able to put them back in the bottle . . . and everybody . . . everybody . . . will be forced to pay the price.”
“What makes this threat so different from all the others?” the Seraphim asked with genuine curiosity. His wings slowly unfurled, stretched out, and then folded back. “Why don’t you just force me . . . bend me to your will as you always have. Give me a taste of freedom, and then lock me away, deep in the darkness until you need me again.”
“This is different,” Remy said. “We have to be together on this . . . need to be. . . .”
Remy hated to have to admit this, especially to his angelic nature, but it was true. Humanity would not be an asset in dealing with the Shaitan. He remembered what it had done to Zophiel, and it frightened him more than anything.
“We have to be more like we once were.”
The Seraphim’s eyes widened. “How we once were?”
Remy nodded. “It has to be if we are to survive this.”
“And what of your precious humanity?”
“It’ll still be here, but . . .”
“Pushed down in the darkness,” the Seraphim growled, enjoying the words.
“Until—”
“Do you even remember what you were?” the Seraphim interrupted.
He moved fast, dropping directly in front of Remy with a single thrust of his powerful wings. The Seraphim stood before him, studying him, but Remy did not flinch. The angel tore the metal gauntlet from one hand, exposing pale, alabaster flesh and long, delicate fingers.
“I remember,” Remy said, not quite sure what the Seraphim was about to do.
“Do you?” the Seraphim hissed, as he placed his cold fingertips upon Remy’s brow.
And then Remy did remember. But this time, he saw the reality of it all, the true memory no longer dulled by the passage of millennia, no longer softened by the fabrication of his humanity.
He saw.
He saw that he was an instrument of God, an extension of the Creator’s love and rage. He was an extension of the Almighty, as were his brethren. And all was right in the mechanism of the universe . . . until the birth of humanity.
When they were placed within the Garden, things went horribly awry.
The war came not long after that, and his full potential became tapped. No longer was he just a messenger of God; he was transformed by battle into a thing of violence, a thing that channeled the wrath of the Almighty.
And he reveled in it, smiting all who would raise their weapons against his—their—Creator.
How dare they do this? How dare they question His most holy word?
Those he had known as brothers fell beneath his hungry sword, and as each died, a little bit of him died with them.
Stained with the blood of his family, he found that he could no longer be there—no longer bathe in the light of his Lord God.
For the light had dimmed.
Bitter and confused, he left Heaven, hoping to make sense of it—to find some meaning—upon the world that God had fashioned for His favorite, yet disobedient, creations.
It was there that he lost himself, where the separation of what he was and what he would become began.
Yet he still carried all that anger, buried away, festering.
Seething.
Infected and pustulated, covered with a thin bandage of humanity.
He saw.
The Seraphim stepped back, studying him as he pulled the gauntlet back onto his hand.
Remy was shaken; the powerfully raw emotion of what his angelic nature had experienced—was still experiencing—was stunning.
“What do you want me to say?” he gasped, as the Seraphim walked away. “That I can give you answers to your questions? That I can somehow make it like it used to be? I can’t do that . . . it will never be the same.”
Remy paused, feeling the rage as he once had. “There are no answers; it’s just how it is. Everything had lost its meaning until I started to watch them.”
“To become like them,” the Seraphim said with a sneer.
“Yeah,” Remy agreed. “And was that so bad?”
“It is not what you are.”
“No, but it’s what I’ve become.”
The Seraphim stared with an intensity that was nearly palpable. But Remy stared back, refusing to back down.
And suddenly the angel spread his wings, a sword of fire—Zophiel’s flaming sword—appearing in his hand. The armor that adorned it was suddenly dirty, stained maroon with the blood of his memory.
“Look upon me,” the angel commanded, his voice booming like thunder. “Look at what I’ve become.”
The Seraphim was a fearsome sight indeed.
“Right now, this is what I need you to be,” Remy said, walking across the top of the spire toward the Seraphim, and offering his hand.
“You,” the Seraphim snarled, staring at Remy’s hand as if it were covered in filth. “What Eden . . . the Earth . . . and the Creator need you to be . . . What I need to be.”
And with those words the Seraphim turned swiftly, unfurled its wings, and leapt from the spire, gliding down to disappear amid the elaborate structures of the holy City of Light twinkling below.
“Are we ready?”
Remy blinked repeatedly, first seeing the multiple boats and those who manned them in the water below where he stood, before turning his gaze to Jon and Izzy, who stared wide-eyed at him.
“Are you all right?” Jon asked. “You got kind of quiet.”
“I’m fine,” Remy said, remembering—experiencing—the rage of the Seraphim. “We should get going.”
They were standing close together on the porch outside of Izzy’s house, having decided that they were going to Eden.
“We was waitin’ for you,” Izzy said. “You was goin’ to tell me how to get to the Garden when you went all strong-silent-type on us.”
“Sorry,” Remy apologized. “I was just thinking.”
“Well, how about you think me an explanation as to how we’re going to find that place.”
“We need some blood,” Jon said before Remy could reply.
Izzy looked at him as if he had three heads. “I’ll give you blood,” she said, making a fist that crackled with repressed supernatural energy.
“He needs it to track the location,” Jon explained, throwing up his hands in surrender. “If you can sense where Eden is, then he can track it through the magick in your blood.”
She looked at Remy.
“I’m afraid he’s telling the truth.”
“How much blood?” Izzy asked.
“Enough that I can catch a strong scent,” Remy explained.
Izzy shook her head in disgust, reached into the pocket of her jacket—she’d put it on because she could sense that Eden was resting someplace cold—and removed a penknife.
She unsnapped the small blade and let it hover over the index finger of her left hand. “This all right?”
“Should be fine,” Remy answered with nod.
She dug the blade into the center of the finger’s pad, the blood welling up on either side of the blade. “Shit,” she hissed. “Now what?”
“I need to smell it.”
She raised her finger toward Remy’s nose. He closed his eyes and inhaled, taking the scent of her magickally tainted blood into his nose.
Images exploded in his mind, pictures so vivid it was as if he were already there.
“Got it?” Izzy asked.
He opened his eyes and nodded, then spread his wings wide.
“Come closer,” he told them. They shuffled toward him, and his wings began to close around them as if in a hug.
“This isn’t gonna hurt, is it?” Izzy asked.
“When was the last time that you ate?” Jon asked, as their reality began to shift.
And they were gone.
Gregson Paul had been raised a good Catholic boy.
Church every Sunday for most of his life, followed by an hour of Sunday school, where he’d learned the wonders of the Holy Bible.
He’d always thought of the stories inside the Good Book as that—just stories, parables that sought to teach the reader something about how to live life as a good Christian.
He never thought of any of it as true: Noah’s ark, Lot, Sodom and Gomorrah, Moses and his commandments.
But here—at the North Pole—right before his eyes, one of those stories had come to life.
“It’s Eden,” he said to Marjorie Halt as he gazed through the metal of the gate at the thick greenery beyond.
“You’re fucking crazy,” she said, hands on an impressive hip as she studied the gated jungle that had appeared amid the ice and snow.
“Then explain it,” he said. “Look at us.”
They were in their T-shirts and underwear, the heat from the mysterious jungle overwhelmingly tropical.
“There has to be an answer,” she said, pacing back and forth in front of the gate.
Daniel Hiratsu knelt silently in the grass, his scientific instruments scattered uselessly about him. All he could do was stare. Terrance Long stayed back on the ice and snow, clothed in his heavy gear. He was attempting to communicate with anyone who would listen, but was met with a wall of interference. It appeared that Eden would not let him.
Gregson knew that it was Eden before them, as crazy as that sounded. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind. It was as if the jungle were broadcasting something directly into his mind, telling him that this was true.
“I want to go in,” Marjorie said as she wiped trickles of sweat from her brow. She was standing before the gate, a look of determination on her pretty face.
An uncomfortable feeling suddenly twisted in Gregson’s gut.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said.
“Why?” she asked. “Why isn’t it?”
“Because we’re not allowed,” he said, having no idea where his answer had come from but knowing it to be true.
“Yeah, right,” Marjorie said. She turned, rushing the gate and grabbing hold of its metal bars.
She didn’t even have a chance to scream.
The lightning arced from the sky, striking the top of her pretty head, disintegrating her in a flash of brilliance that caused small, colorful blobs to dance before Gregson’s rapidly blinking eyes.
All he could do was stare at where the girl whose remarkable ass had brought him to the North Pole had been standing, now nothing more than a smoldering mark upon the ground before the gate.
After a moment, the sound of sobbing distracted him and he turned to see Hiratsu rocking back and forth, his face stained with tears. Long was standing nearby, having ventured onto the grass, the hissing walkie-talkie he’d been using resting by his boot, where he had dropped it.
“I told her,” Gregson said, his voice cracking. He could feel his sanity slip just a little bit more. “I told her not to do it.”
“We should go,” Long said, his voice cold and emotionless. “We should get out of here before . . .”
Before we’re all struck down by lightning . . . by the wrath of God? Gregson wondered.
He slowly turned from the Garden on wobbly legs and caught sight of figures in the distance near their tent. He hadn’t noticed their approach; they just suddenly seemed to be there.
“Who . . . ?” Gregson began.
The others turned to follow his gaze; then almost as one they began to move toward the strangers.
But the closer they got, the more wrong they appeared.
The lead figure was dressed in long, tattered robes, like some sort of twisted monk. The other appeared naked, his flesh as white as the snow they trod across, but covered in strange, angular black markings. An even odder observation was that he appeared to be carrying two people beneath his arms, an older black woman, and . . .
A mummified body.
Alarms went off in Gregson’s brain and he felt the grip of madness embrace him that much closer; first the Garden of Eden, and now this.
Gregson called out to warn Terrance, well in the lead, but he was too late. Terrance had stopped before the robed figure. Gregson could just about make out the scientist’s excited voice as he spoke to them.
The pale-skinned man—if he was a man at all—seemed to lose his shape, dropping the two figures that he carried and lunging at Terrance Long.
What happened next was indescribable.
The monster—there was no doubt in Gregson’s mind as to what he was now—pounced upon the scientist and, in a display of preternatural strength, began to rip the man to pieces, eating the body parts as if starving, as the leader of their expedition’s blood stained the snow.
Hiratsu screamed and started to run, but the white-fleshed monster simply reached out with an arm that grew incredibly long to coil around the Asian-American’s ankle and draw him toward the beast.
Gregson couldn’t move, watching as Hiratsu struggled to halt his progress, digging his fingers first into the grass, and then into the ice, but to no effect.
Finished with Long, the white-skinned thing pounced upon Hiratsu, its protean form flowing over the man as his screams intensified.
Gregson finally looked away as Hiratsu’s pathetic cries died away, to be replaced by the sounds of something hungrily eating.
He did not hear the approach of the robed man, but found him standing before him.
Gregson knew, could feel, that he was in the presence of someone—something—unearthly. He was going to speak, but could think of nothing to say.
The robed figure turned his attention toward the gate and the lush, steamy jungle behind it. “Your kind had its chance,” he said, his voice low and melodious. “But you tossed it all away.”
He looked back at Gregson, his eyes cold and mesmerizing in their intensity. “I could never understand His fascination,” he said. “I could have given Him something so much more . . . worthy.”
Gregson had no idea what the robed man was talking about, but continued to listen.
“And now it’s come to this.”
He stepped forward and leaned close to Gregson’s face. “Do you have even the slightest idea what I’m talking about, monkey?” he asked.
“No,” Gregson croaked, and began to cry.
The man’s intensity softened, and he put his arms around Gregson’s shoulders, drawing him into an embrace.
“It’s all right,” he whispered. “It’s not your fault; it’s as if He wanted you to fail. Engineered it to be so.”
Gregson was sobbing now, his face buried in the collar of the filthy fabric of the man’s robes. It smelled strongly of blood, and of the air just before a storm.
“But I believe I can do better,” the robed figure said, suddenly pushing Gregson away. “I must do better if reality is to survive the coming cataclysm.”
Gregson’s brain was on fire, trying desperately to hold on to what little sanity he had left. “Who . . . who are you?” he managed to ask.
The robed man seemed genuinely pleased by the question, and his posture straightened as he spoke.
“I am Lord God,” he pronounced.
But that just made Gregson Paul laugh as the final strands of his hold on reality snapped, and he began a free fall into madness. First the Garden of Eden, now God.