Remy beat his wings powerfully, propelling himself back and through the kitchen as the demon fired. In a dish strainer beside the sink Remy found a cast-iron frying pan, using the cooking tool as a means to defend himself.
As well as a weapon.
He infused the metal handle with the fire of God, the metal beginning to glow white-hot almost instantly in his grasp. The demon shot, and Remy lashed out, swatting the projectiles aside, listening as they clattered noisily to the floor. Remy glanced down to where one of the bullets had landed, and was shocked to see something that resembled a tooth lying there.
The assassin dashed from the kitchen, his movements so fast that it was almost as if he had disappeared. Burning frying pan in hand, Remy pushed off with his wings, the cramped conditions of the apartment preventing him from being able to take flight.
Remy saw the demon pulling the door open to make his escape, and hurled the burning pan in his direction. The demon ducked as the pan struck the doorframe beside his pale head. He snarled once more, raising his gun of bone and firing multiple shots again before racing out the door.
Remy barely managed to get out of the way as the organic-looking bullets chewed into the wall not far from his face.
He was already in pursuit when he heard the most ungodly of screams emanate from the hallway outside the apartment, and he quickened his pace to get there.
Careful, just in case he might be fired upon again, Remy darted from the apartment in a low crouch, prepared for just about anything that might follow.
Except for what did.
What was left of the demon lay upon its back in the middle of the corridor, the pale flesh now burned to a blackened crisp. Jagged bolts of supernatural energy wove through the body’s ashen remains, as if searching out any part of the demon’s form that was still flesh.
The energy then shot from the remains, like serpents of electricity, causing the blackened assassin’s body to crumble away, leaving nothing more than a large pile of ashes in a humanoid shape.
The energy then returned to the man standing no more than five feet away, coalescing in the palm of his outstretched hand.
“Thought you might need a hand,” Constantin Malatesta said as the magickal energy he’d wielded was absorbed back into his flesh.
“I certainly hope you don’t mind.”
• • •
Remy withdrew his wings as he walked toward the assassin’s remains.
“Have you been following me, Mr. Malatesta?” Remy asked, kneeling down to sift through the ashes, retrieving the strange weapon of bone.
“I didn’t care for how our first meeting ended,” the Vatican representative said. “So I made a conscious effort to reconnect with you. Lo and behold, you were summoned to Rhode Island, as was I.”
Remy stood, eyeing the man.
“You weren’t at the mansion.”
“Not inside, but I was there,” Malatesta explained. “I received a message from one of my Keeper informants that something was going on, and that you had been called in. Let’s just say, my curiosity was piqued.”
“Doesn’t explain how you ended up here,” Remy said.
There was a click and the creak of a door opening as Squire stepped out into the hall, his stocky, leathery-skinned body wrapped in a bath towel.
“I called him,” he said.
Remy glared.
“What?” the hobgoblin protested. “Vatican boy said he’d give me fifty bucks every time I saw you. A guy’s gotta make some scratch on the side somehow.”
He then turned his stare back to Malatesta.
“I needed to know where you were, what you were up to,” Malatesta explained. “The Keepers believe . . .”
There was a moan of pain from the doorway behind them.
“Holy crap, Angus,” Squire said. “You look like shit.”
The sorcerer slid down the doorframe to the floor, as Remy was on the move.
“I think he’s been shot,” Remy told them.
Squire and Malatesta helped get the injured sorcerer back into the apartment, dragging him over to an overstuffed sofa in the living room.
Adjusting his towel as it began to slide off, the hobgoblin then tore open Heath’s shirt to get a look at the wound. It was nasty looking, seeping blood as well as some other yellow, viscous fluid.
“That doesn’t look right,” Squire said. “What was he shot with?”
Remy remembered that he was still holding the weapon, and held it out for Squire to see.
“Oh, isn’t that cute?” the hobgoblin said. “Does it fire regular bullets?”
“No,” Remy stated. “It looked like it fired teeth.”
“Swell,” Squire muttered, just as Heath began to convulse, a spurt of blood and puss erupting from the wound.
Squire tore the towel from around his waist, bringing it down on the strange bullet wound.
“Get out of the way,” Malatesta said, pushing Remy aside, and kneeling down beside Heath convulsing upon the couch.
“Remove the towel,” the Vatican representative said.
The hobgoblin started to protest, but shut his mouth when he saw that the man’s hand had started to glow an eerie blue, and pulled the towel away.
The sudden blast of stink was almost palpable, and Remy stepped back.
“What’s wrong with him?” Remy asked.
“The projectile has released its poison,” Malatesta said. “If I don’t act quickly . . .”
The Vatican representative plunged his fingers down into the wound, the blue energy radiating from the tips of his fingers causing the blood, puss, and flesh to froth and sizzle.
Heath moaned in his unconsciousness, head thrashing from side to side, the agony great as it wreaked havoc on his body.
Most of the fingers of Malatesta’s right hand were buried deep inside the wound as blood and discharge bubbled and smoked.
“I have done all I can,” he said finally, withdrawing his gore-covered fingers. He held them up, showing the broken pieces of what used to be a tooth. “Hopefully I got them all.”
Malatesta then took the towel from Squire and wiped his hand.
“I would suggest covering the injury with a bandage,” he said. “Wouldn’t want it to get any more infected than it already is.”
“Is he gonna be all right?” Squire asked. He had left the living room, and had gone into the kitchen, returning with a roll of paper towels and a bottle of whiskey.
“I believe I got all of the projectile, and hopefully burned away most of the poison,” he explained. “If his constitution holds out, he’ll probably recover over time.”
Remy watched as Squire tended to his friend, cleaning the wound with paper towels soaked in the whiskey.
“So I’m guessing he’s out of the picture for a while,” Remy said.
“I doubt he’ll regain consciousness anytime soon,” Malatesta answered. “Would I be forward to ask what it was that you needed him for?”
Remy considered the situation, and suddenly found himself with an answer.
“I’m in the middle of a job and require somebody with a certain skill set,” Remy said, looking away from the unconscious Heath to the Vatican agent, who was still wiping the blood from his hands. “But I think I might’ve found an alternative.”
Malatesta cocked his head inquisitively.
“From what you did to the assassin out in the hall, and what you did to save our friend, it looks as though you have some special talents.”
“Yes?” Malatesta inquired.
“Exactly how good of a sorcerer are you?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Northern Ukraine
Within the Zone of Alienation
Simeon stood in the window of the office building, looking out through the cracked and broken panes of glass onto the abandoned Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
The forever man remembered how dangerous it had once been, the levels of radiation so high as to cause skin to blister, and wreak irrepara
ble damage at a cellular level.
It had been a true place of death, which is why he had first been drawn to it. No matter how many times he had failed in his pursuit of the final sleep, Simeon never gave up hope that perhaps, someday, he would at last be given that which he desired most of all.
That at last he would be granted the bliss of death.
But the Almighty was unnaturally cruel, allowing everything within a thirty-kilometer radius of the damaged facility to wither and die.
Everything except for him.
In the first days following the evacuation of the city of Prypiat and some of the villages closer to Chernobyl, Simeon had walked the lonely streets, feeling the effects of the deadly radiation, but never succumbing.
Though it did not give him what he most wanted, he grew to admire this place, reveling in its eerie quiet.
It was as if a tiny corner of the world had simply stopped.
A place of death, and it gave him something to aspire to.
But all good things . . .
From the window, Simeon watched a rabbit emerge. It scampered out from beneath some overgrowth, near a section of rusted chain-link fence that had been taken down by a fallen tree.
Twenty years later, life was slowly returning to the region. He’d even heard rumors that people were again being allowed to walk the evacuated streets, a once-forbidden curiosity to be explored.
He so despised letting go of things he’d grown to love. If he had to be around forever, so should at least a few of the things that gave him some bit of happiness. Simeon snarled, and wondered what his chances were of finding some discarded nuclear material to spread around in order to raise the radiation levels and preserve the solitude of this place.
And then he realized he was no longer alone.
The demon Beleeze stood silently in the doorway to the office.
“Yes,” Simeon sighed, knowing that what was to follow would not be good, for he had left specific instructions that he not be disturbed.
The demon flowed farther into the room.
It always impressed him how silent this species was, as if sound itself was scared away by the primordial creatures.
Beleeze still did not speak.
“Tell me,” Simeon commanded, twisting the ring upon his left hand.
“There’s a problem,” the demon said.
“Where?” Simeon asked, catching sight of a tuft of brown fur as it blew across the cursed earth. He had taken his eyes from the rabbit for only a moment, but it was gone now, tufts of bloody white and brown fur all that remained. Whatever had happened had only taken an instant.
It reminded him of how quickly things could go awry.
“The island,” Beleeze grunted, as if the words themselves were adorned with razor-sharp edges that savagely cut as they left his mouth.
England
1349
They had retired to a great den in the nearly empty castle, the stone walls covered in fine tapestries, a roaring fire burning in the huge stone fireplace.
The Pope sat upon a formidable wooden seat—a throne, really—its upholstery the color of fresh blood. Remiel sat in his own chair, a simple chair in comparison to Tyranus’, but it suited the angel just fine. Both had been set before the fire, a small table for their wine goblets positioned between them.
“Would you like this castle, angel?” Tyranus asked. He held out his goblet, waiting for the servant girl to attend to his needs. She scurried over, filling his cup, careful not to spill a drop.
Remiel pulled his eyes from the mesmerizing flames and looked at the Pope.
“This castle,” Tyranus stated again. “Would you like it? I could make it yours.”
“I have no need for a castle.”
The servant girl was now hovering beside Remy, eager to refill his goblet.
“I am fine, girl,” he told her, and she bowed her head and scurried off.
“Certainly a place to call your own would not be a bad thing,” the Pope continued, as he drank his wine. “A place to settle down . . . a place to call home.”
“This could never be home,” Remiel said grimly. He gently sipped what little drink he had remaining in his cup.
“Do you actually have a place in this world, soldier of God?” Tyranus asked. “What would drive one such as you from the Golden City of Heaven to this place of such turmoil?”
Remiel felt an odd compulsion to tell the holy man of the Great War, but he managed to suppress the urge, rising from the chair to stand before the fire. “Tell me of this necromancer,” he said instead, changing the topic. “The more I know, the swifter will be his defeat.”
The angel leaned upon the stone mantel, staring into the roaring flames, waiting for the Pope’s answer. When he did not respond, Remiel turned to see him reclined on his throne, his goblet of wine resting in his lap. He was watching a young boy, dressed in Vatican finery, setting an ornate wooden box down upon the table between the two chairs.
“What is this?” Remiel asked.
“You wish to learn of the necromancer,” Pope Tyranus replied. “This will tell you all that you need to know.”
Remiel approached, observing the boy as he began to unsnap metal latches that held the box closed. He then pulled the two sides of the box apart to reveal what was inside.
The head was ancient, the skin like parchment stretched taut over the bald pate and the angular bones of the face. The eyes were squeezed tightly shut and sunken in, the orbs of sight behind the withered flesh a long time ago food for the worms and beetles.
“Let me guess,” Remiel said. “One of the ways you fight fire with fire.”
Tyranus smiled dreamily, multiple goblets of wine at last having their effect. “If you are suggesting that the oracle is an object of supernatural power, then you are correct,” the Pope admitted. “Through it I first learned of the necromancer’s existence, and that he possessed Solomon’s sigil.”
Remiel continued to stare at the disembodied head. “What does it do?” he finally asked.
With those words, the boy reached beneath his fine garments and produced a small knife. He stared at his master.
“Pay the oracle,” Tyranus proclaimed as he drank once more from his cup.
Remiel watched as the boy raised the knife to his index finger, slicing the pad with a pained hiss. As the scarlet fluid bubbled out from the slash, the child brought his finger to the head’s pursed lips, smearing the blood there.
The child’s blood beaded upon the dry, leathery flesh, before slowly being absorbed. At first Remiel believed it be a trick of the flickering light thrown by the fire in the stone hearth behind him, but came to realize that the lips of the corpse were swelling, and then a tongue, dried and withered like a piece of tree bark, snaked out from between the engorged lips to partake of the boy’s offering.
The boy squeezed his wound to bleeding again, and brought it down to the writhing mouth.
The head opened its awful mouth eagerly, and the boy stuck the bleeding digit into the gaping mouth, where it was at once suckled upon.
The child gasped as the head continued to suck greedily.
“That’s enough, boy,” Pope Tyranus ordered from his throne. “Make the oracle work for its sustenance.”
With a growing revulsion, Remiel watched as the child withdrew his finger from the corpse-head’s eager mouth. It began to emit a horrible, high-pitched keening.
“Silence, oracle,” the Pope commanded.
The head ceased its noise, its nose twitching as if attempting to locate the scent of the one who commanded it.
“You have been fed, and now you will tell us of what we ask,” Pope Tyranus proclaimed.
“The payment has been made,” the head spoke in a weak, high-pitched voice. “You will be told what the oracle knows.”
The boy had removed a lace handkerchief from somewhere within his robes, swathing his bleeding finger in the finest material.
“Tell us of the necromancer,” Pope Tyranus state
d. “You will tell us of the necromancer called Hallow.”
The oracle considered what was asked of it, the lids covering the empty sockets of its eyes moving as if there were something beneath them, something squirming around to eventually be free.
“One of twins born of human, and protohuman,” the oracle wheezed. “They were to be the guardians of magick, one representing the light, and the other, the dark. They were to maintain the balance, to keep one power from overwhelming the other.”
The oracle stopped talking, its mouth moving hungrily.
“Go on, oracle,” Remiel commanded.
“So dry,” the head hissed weakly. “So very, very thirsty.”
“Finish your tale and we shall see about quenching that thirst,” Tyranus stated cruelly.
The oracle noisily smacked its parched lips together, building up enough moisture that it could go on.
“One power believed itself stronger than the other, throwing the balance into turmoil. The light would take from the dark, both powers amassed in one . . . but the darkness would not stand for this and a great battle was fought—the light versus the darkness . . . brother against brother. . . .” The oracle’s voice trailed off.
“And this battle,” Remiel said. “The light versus the dark—it continues?”
“Yes,” the oracle replied. “The opposing forces collect their objects of magickal power in the hopes that one will eventually triumph over the other, and claim the might of the opposition.”
“The necromancer . . . Hallow. He has Solomon’s sigil?” Remiel asked.
“Yes,” the oracle hissed. “A prize coveted by many who know the ways of the weird, and especially by one who serves the light. This will be the prize most viciously sought, for it will upset the balance once and for all, and the power of magick both black and white will rest in the hands of . . .”
“We are done,” Pope Tyranus proclaimed, empty chalice clattering to the floor as he stood up from his throne.
Remiel stared at the Pope, curious of the interruption.
“The oracle is a tricky creature,” the Pope said. “It will continue to prattle just to hear itself if it believes it will be fed.”