Reaching for the doorknob, he felt the pulsations of the infernal place radiate from the crystal knob, a warning of what he was likely to find on the other side.
Again he steeled himself with the memory of Madeline, and like a suit of armor, it protected him against the relentless onslaught of the dispiriting atmosphere.
He took the knob and turned it, pulling the door open and letting it bang off the wall as he stood in the entryway looking down the stairs. Voices drifted up from the room below, voices that sounded familiar.
Madach shuffled closer. “We’re going . . . we’re going down there?” he asked, gulping noisily as he stared down the steep set of steps that led to the living area below.
The voices continued, followed by some menacing music that strangely enough seemed to fit the situation. Eerie pulses of light caused bizarre shadows to dance around what little they could see of the room waiting at the bottom.
“Looks like it,” Remy said, already beginning his descent.
He stopped momentarily to give Madach a look, making sure that he wasn’t going down alone.
The fallen angel pulled his act together, using the banister as he leaned against the wall, taking each of the descending steps slowly.
They were closer to the source. It was all Remy could do to keep from blacking out with the intensity of malevolence that hung in the air like smoke.
“We’ve got to keep it together,” he told Madach, who didn’t appear to want to leave the next-to-the-last step. He stood there, body rigid, petrified.
“You’re doing fine,” Remy told him, walking into the living space. “Don’t make me haul you off those steps.”
His words having their desired effect, Remy listened as Madach descended the remaining stairs and followed at his back.
Nothing appeared abnormal. The strange, shifting light and the sound of voices were caused by the television set. Remy took note that Francis had been watching Jaws. There was a half-eaten sandwich and cup of coffee sitting on the table, next to Francis’ chair.
“Where is he?” Madach asked through trembling lips.
Remy didn’t answer, approaching the television and turning the volume down to nothing. He hated to do it. His favorite scene was on: Quint’s speech about being on the Indianapolis.
But it didn’t become completely quiet.
He saw that Madach was carefully looking around the space, zeroing in on the source of the additional sound.
“It’s coming from over there,” he said, pointing with a nearly lifeless hand at the narrow corridor that ended with the worn door to Hell.
Remy moved down the hallway, the noise growing louder the closer he got to the door.
“I don’t think . . . I don’t think you want to go down there,” Madach said at his back, and Remy had to agree.
He didn’t want to go there, but there really wasn’t much choice.
Madach stopped at the edge of the darkened corridor as Remy continued.
The door was closed, but a radiance of palpable hopelessness emanated off the paint-blistered surface of the wood, and the sounds coming from the other side—he hadn’t a clue how to describe them. They were like the raging of a powerful storm, the sounds of nature’s fury muffled only by the fragile barrier that kept the storm at bay.
Something was wrong on the other side of that door.
Horribly, horribly wrong.
Remy wanted to quit, to drop down to the floor, allowing the sins and failures of his very long life to wash over him, to drag his body out into an ocean of anguish but Madeline helped him to fight, her memory urging him on.
The doorknob was both excruciatingly hot and numbingly cold in his grasp. As he was about to turn it, he looked to the end of the hall to see Madach standing there. The fallen looked as though he had aged twenty years, his body stooped from the Hellish emissions that pummeled them.
“Don’t,” he begged, a plaintive hand reaching out trying to convince him not to do what Remy knew had to be done.
He had to find out what was going on, and what fate had befallen his friend.
He had to know about Francis.
Remy turned the knob, throwing open the door to a blast of intense, lung-shriveling heat, followed by suffocating cold.
Through watering eyes Remy gazed in horror at the sight before him. Francis stood upon the bridge of writhing, fallen-angels in the midst of battle, a bloodstained sword in one hand, a gun in the other. From out of the icy prison streamed a steady flow of prisoners, their mouths open in ululating screams of madness and rage as they attempted to put him down, fighting to get past the only thing preventing them from making their way toward the exit and the earthly plane beyond.
Remy stared, frozen in place by the sight of the former Guardian angel as he dispatched wave after wave of his attackers. He was relentless in his defense, as were the fallen in their attempts to remove him from their path. For every fallen angel that fell beneath the boom of gunfire, or was cut in two by the bite of his sword blade, there seemed to be four more scrambling over the decimated corpses to take their places.
“What’s going on? What do you see?” Madach cried, temporarily distracting Remy from the disturbing scene playing out before him.
Remy glanced to the end of the hall and then back through the doorway. He had to do something; the number of fallen angels spilling out from the prison onto the bridge was growing unmanageable, many of the pale-skinned attackers tumbling over the side of the bridge of angel flesh to the Hellish landscape waiting for them below.
He started onto the bridge, the bodies of the fallen that comprised the structure quivering beneath the heel of his shoes.
“Francis,” Remy yelled.
The Guardian turned and his face twisted at the sight of Remy.
“Get back!” he screamed, quickly returning his attention to the marauding fallen, cutting down five more before looking back. “Get back into the fucking apartment!”
Remy hesitated, not sure what he should do. It wouldn’t be long before his friend succumbed to the ever-increasing number trying to escape.
He started forward again, feeling the stirring of the Seraphim within. He would have to let it out if he was going to be of any significant help to Francis in holding back the ravening hordes emerging from Tartarus.
Francis turned back again, his favorite suit tattered, spattered with blood, his horn-rimmed glasses missing.
“Don’t you fucking listen?” he bellowed, shoving the hand-gun into the waistband of his pants and reaching inside his jacket pocket to remove something that chilled Remy more than the frigid air radiating from the frozen prison at the bridge’s end.
Francis held a grenade, something that he’d likely picked up wholesale from one of the many weapons suppliers that he did business with.
“I said go back.” And with those words he pulled the pin on the round, olive green explosive device, rolling it across the uneven surface of the flesh bridge, where it became trapped within one of the open mouths of the angel-damned.
Remy knew what was about to happen and turned quickly, running back toward the open door.
The force of the blast propelled him through the doorway, face-first into the corridor wall, the deafening roar of the explosion and agonized screams of the fallen angels that made up the bridge suddenly cut off by the slamming of the door behind him.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Remy rolled awkwardly onto his back, the metallic taste of fresh blood filling his mouth. He leaned his head back against the wall of the narrow corridor, and gazed at the dilapidated door, listening to the sudden silence.
Slowly Madach moved down the hallway toward him. “What happened?” he asked, cautiously eyeing the closed door.
Remy scrambled to his feet, his human form aching in more places than he could count. He ran a hand across his mouth and nose, wiping away the blood there.
“He closed it.”
Remy took hold of the doorknob again, experiencing none of the e
xtreme sensations he had before. The emanations from Hell had stopped completely. Throwing the door wide, he gazed upon a utility closet, the most menacing things inside an ancient mop and a plastic bucket.
“He closed it,” Remy said again, looking fitfully to Madach. His mind was on fire. Something terrible was happening in Tartarus, and he was almost certain that the Nomads were responsible, and that it all revolved around the Pitiless weaponry.
A spasm of cold went up his back, so powerful that it nearly broke his spine, Suroth’s words again echoing in his ear.
This time the true victor will reign supreme . . .
He liked the sounds of them even less now.
Pushing past the fallen, Remy went out to the living area, his brain humming as he tried to piece together every piece of information he’d gathered and form it into something he could act upon.
But there were still too many gaps.
“So what now?” Madach asked, much calmer now since the radiation from Hell had stopped.
Remy dropped down heavily upon the couch. “Good question,” he said, throwing up his hands in frustration. “I’m stumped.” He strained his fevered brain even more, staring at a particular section of pattern on the carpet beneath the coffee table until it blurred.
“The Nomads took the Pitiless for some kind of purpose,” he said aloud. “And from what I just saw, it has something to do with Tartarus and the prisoners there.”
Madach leaned against the doorframe. “They’re going to break them out,” he said suddenly.
Remy looked up, urging him on with his eyes.
“They’re going to use the power of the weapons to free all the fallen angels still being punished in Tartarus.”
A sick sensation began to grow in the pit of Remy’s belly, something horrible and malignant expanding in size as he realized how close Madach likely was to being right.
“They’re going to free all the prisoners,” Remy muttered, again hearing the Nomad leader’s chilling words.
This time the true victor will reign supreme . . .
Tiny pinprick explosions of realization erupted all across the surface of Remy’s brain and suddenly he knew the horrible, deadly truth.
He bolted up from the sofa, going to the closet in the corner of the room adorned with the original poster from The Wild Bunch. He grabbed the latch and gave it a pull. As expected, it was locked, but he couldn’t—wouldn’t—allow that to stop him. He gave the handle a forceful twist followed by a tug and listened as the lock broke, pieces of the mechanism clattering around somewhere inside the closet door.
Remy pulled open the door, exposing Francis’ treasure trove of violence: everything from bladed weapons to guns of almost every caliber, shape, and size. It was a closet filled to the brim with instruments of death.
“Was your friend expecting to fight a war?” Madach asked, coming to stand beside him.
“He liked to be prepared,” Remy said, reaching for one of the handguns—a Glock—hanging from a peg. He hoped that Francis had a hefty supply of the special ammunition he would need to deal with the kind of threat he believed he was going up against.
Madach reached for one of the handguns too.
“You don’t have to do this,” Remy said, finding the ammunition in a small wooden box and loading a full clip. Even touching these special bullets, created from materials mined in Hell, made him feel sicker than he already did.
“Yeah, I think I do,” Madach answered. He took a gun, staring at it in his hand. “You said it yourself. If it wasn’t for me, none of this would have happened.”
Remy slipped the loaded clip into his gun.
Madach helped himself to some of the special bullets, doing as he’d watched Remy do. “Who knows,” he said with the hint of a sad smile, “if I do some good maybe I’ll get time off for good behavior, and I’ll be able to go back home all the sooner.”
Remy scowled, not even wanting to think of Heaven. If what he suspected was going on, he was disturbed to see its lack of involvement. It just proved to him again how dramatically things had changed, and not for the better.
“So what now?” the fallen asked, carefully loading his weapon.
“I had some dealings with the Nomads a few days ago,” Remy said. “Only thing I can think of right now is to check out where I found them last and hope they’ve left clues as to where we go next.”
Madach stared at him blankly.
“I know, the plan sucks, but it’s all I’ve got right now.”
His phone started to ring and he reached inside his coat pocket to retrieve it.
“Hello,” he said, placing it to his ear.
There was a long pause, and Remy was about to hang up on the call when he heard the unmistakable sound of labored breathing. He almost laughed, an obscene phone call at a time like this, but then the caller managed to speak.
“Mr. Chandler,” it gasped, and he recognized the voice.
“Karnighan?”
“Come to Lexington, Mr. Chandler,” the old man wheezed, sounding as though he was teetering at death’s door.
“Karnighan, I certainly will be coming to Lexington. You’ve got a lot of questions to answer, but right now . . .”
“Come to Lexington, Remiel,” Karnighan interrupted, using Remy’s angelic name as if he’d known it all along. “It’s time you knew what is going on.”
Mulvehill wasn’t picking up, so Remy left a message.
“Hey, it’s me,” he started, leaning back against his parked car. He wanted to be sure to phrase what he had to say right. He didn’t want to frighten his friend, but how else could he explain that he might not survive the next few hours? “Listen, I’ve got a favor to ask.”
Remy glanced back up the street toward Mass Avenue. Things looked as though they’d returned somewhat to normalcy. He was sure the multiple fire trucks and police cars and hazmat teams were still milling about upper Newbury Street. As he’d left the brownstone, he’d heard murmurings about some sort of weird gas leak.
Whatever helps them make it through the night, he thought.
“Things have gotten a bit intense,” he started to explain into the phone. “Not sure how much deeper I’m going to be sucked into this and I was wondering if you could . . . if need be . . . take care of stuff for me.”
He felt a raw, painful surge of emotion that he was more than willing to blame on the residuals of the Hell leakage, but deep down Remy knew that it wasn’t the case. These were the emotions he’d suppressed—pushed down deep—since Madeline’s death. They bubbled to the surface now, hot . . . burning.
Infuriating.
It was a product of that damn humanity he’d worked so hard to achieve. All part of being human.
“I know you’ve said you’re not good with dogs, but . . . if something should happen to me . . . would you take care of him . . . of Marlowe?”
He thought about his animal friend, feeling guilty about how much the simple creature had had to endure over the past few months.
“I’d really appreciate it if you would do that for me.” Remy paused, not knowing how to go on. He really didn’t have anything more to say.
“Thanks, buddy,” he finally added. “Take care of yourself and . . . well, I hope to see you later.”
He thought about telling Mulvehill how much his friendship had meant to him over the years, but decided that in the long run it wouldn’t have been worth the punishment. If he managed to survive what was ahead, and had left a message pretty much professing his love for the man, any moment spent afterward with the homicide cop would be unbearable, the teasing that he would have to endure more painful than the tortures of Hell.
Why take a chance?
He pocketed his phone and got into the car.
“Everything all right?” Madach asked, staring straight ahead with unblinking eyes.
“Had to put some stuff in order, just in case.”
Remy slipped the key into the ignition and turned the engine over. Pulling ou
t of the parking space, he drove down Comm Avenue, trying to get as far from the commotion surrounding Newbury Street as possible. He swung around the Public Garden, then past the Common and the State House, tempted to stop and see Marlowe one more time. But as usual, time was wasting. He picked up 93 by Haymarket and headed north out of the city. It was a roundabout route but it would eventually get them to Lexington and Karnighan’s mansion.
They drove in silence, Remy lost in his thoughts, trying to recall every minute detail of the case, carefully picking through the information in search of something he might have overlooked.