“Angus!” Francis cried out, pulling his pistol as the other shape and another behind that one swam up behind the sorcerer, helping to push him from the pool.
“Put that fucking thing away,” said a voice that was vaguely familiar to him.
Francis came forward and bent down to grab hold of Angus’ arm and pull him from the sucking blackness, careful to not fall in himself.
“Nice to see you again,” Francis said. “Didn’t think you’d made it.”
The sorcerer coughed, spitting filth from his mouth. “Wouldn’t have…if…if it wasn’t for them.”
Two more figures had crawled out of the black lake, a smaller, stockier form helping the thinner, more petite.
It didn’t take Francis long to recognize the goblin that had brought Remy back from the shadow realm and the teenage girl that Remy had been so desperate to save.
“Are you responsible for that?” Francis asked, as the goblin walked over to the dead serpent, brushing off the clinging remnants of liquid shadow from his clothes. The goblin squatted down and with a grunt rolled the massive body of the snake over. There was a nasty-looking knife blade protruding from its lower body.
“Yep,” the goblin said, removing the blade and letting the body flop back heavily to the floor. He wiped the thing’s black blood on the leg of his pants.
“Impressive,” Francis said.
“Thanks.”
The goblin went to stand beside the girl, who was peeling away the darkness that clung to her, flicking it onto the floor. There was a look in her eyes, something that probably hadn’t been there before all this, when she was just Remy’s neighbor, looking after his dog.
“You all right?” Francis asked her.
She just stared at him with those intense eyes. Eyes that had seen so much in such a short period of time.
“Ashley, right?” Francis said, positive that this time she was the real thing and not some artificial life-form created from magick and clay.
She nodded quickly. “Do I know you?”
“No, but you know my friend…Remy.”
“Remy,” she said.
“Yeah. I’m going to take you to him, all right?” Francis said.
Ashley nodded again. “Remy will take me home,” she said, a hint of hope in her voice.
“That’s the plan,” Francis said, his mind already on to the next obstacle.
It wasn’t going to be easy.
The two sorcerers stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity, but it was Stearns who blinked first.
Remy watched as the exoskeletoned Stearns uttered some guttural spell, casting a wave of destructive power toward his opponent. Reacting instinctively, Remy threw his body over that of the little girl, shielding her from the devastating repercussions that were sure to follow.
From the corner of his eye, Remy watched as Deacon cast his own spell, a shield of protection that deflected the magickal outburst from Stearns toward the ceiling with catastrophic results.
There was a cacophonous rush of air as the ceiling of the skyscraper exploded in a shower of rubble, glass, and steel. Remy could not help but turn his gaze to the nightmare unfolding above him, coming to the sickening realization that things were even worse than he suspected.
He’d pictured the wreckage of the skyscraper rooftop plummeting to the streets of Boston below, never imagining that the rubble wouldn’t get the chance to fall. In the dark and tempestuous sky above him, there was a black and swirling whirlpool; a spinning hole in the fabric of reality, sucking up the pieces of refuse blown into the air by the deflection of Stearns’ magickal attack.
“Dear God,” Remy uttered. He could feel the pull of the vortex, and knew without a doubt where it had originated. Somehow by coming here, Deacon had created some sort of opening—a breach between the shadow realm and the world outside it.
It was Deacon’s turn to attack now, the fires of the divine flowing from his outstretched hands to incinerate Stearns below. Remy could feel the power move as it flowed from the air, hungry to consume its adversary, a familiar tugging at the core of his being for the divine might that once was his.
Stearns awkwardly leapt from the path of the hungry fire, already unleashing another magickal attack on his adversary. Explosions of supernatural energies were decimating what remained of the television studio, and Remy knew that it wouldn’t be long until he and the child were left exposed and helpless.
“We have to get out of here,” he told her over the near-deafening sounds of a sorcerers’ duel. The child began to protest as Remy bent down to lift her, and he was startled by what he saw. A section of wall had fallen on the child’s lower body, the injuries exposing the truth about her.
“Leave me here,” she said, attempting to push him away.
Though her lower body was revealed to be made from clay, Remy saw genuine pain in the artificial child’s eyes then, and it moved him to not even consider her request.
He tossed the section of wall away and lifted her up from the ground, the pull on him from the swirling maelstrom in the sky above becoming stronger. It was something he didn’t even want to consider, but he could feel the dark dimension tugging on his clothes as he made his way across the pieces of rubble, toward where he remembered the door leading into the studio had been.
“I’m going to take you someplace safe and…”
“And then?” Angelina asked, her voice frightfully soft over the sounds of magickal conflict going on behind them.
“Don’t you worry about that,” Remy said, finding the twisted remains of the staircase that would bring them down to the level below the studio.
“I would have killed them,” Angelina said into his ear as he carefully descended the broken steps.
On the next level, he found a safe place to set her down beneath a section of ceiling that still appeared relatively intact.
“Don’t think of that now,” he said, gently leaning her back against a section of wall.
“If the attack hadn’t come, I would have killed everyone who was watching and listening to me,” she said.
He didn’t argue, knowing that what she said was indeed the truth.
“I knew that something was wrong when I felt them—the angels—inside my head.” The little child paused, eyes welling with tears. “They were hurting so bad,” she said. “And they actually believed that their hurt could make things better.”
Something exploded above them, plaster dust raining down on them like a fog.
“But we don’t have to worry about that now,” Remy told her. “I have to go,” he started to explain. “But I want you to stay here and be safe until…”
“Until,” she said.
“I have to try to do something,” he told her.
She smiled at him, tears running down her filthy cheeks. She lifted a hand and placed it on his face.
“You’re special, aren’t you?” she said. “You’re like them…the angels. But instead of sadness, you’re filled with hope.”
He tried to leave her, but for some reason couldn’t.
“I can feel something inside you,” she said, still touching him. “Something buried so very deep…It wants to come out, but it’s hurt…weak.”
The entire building was shaking again, the fight above intensifying. He had no idea what the two sorcerers were capable of; it was a distinct possibility that the city could be destroyed as a result of their confrontation.
He took her hand and started to pull it away.
“I need to go, Angelina,” he told her.
“I have some of their life still inside me,” she said.
Remy didn’t understand.
“When I began the angels’ message, some of those who were listening passed away, and their life energies were passed into me,” the golem child said.
“Didn’t Stearns…”
“He received some, but not all. When the power went out, for a little bit, there was still energy flowing into me.”
“I
don’t understand what that has to do with me,” Remy told her.
“I can use that power…. I can wake it up,” she said.
Remy cocked his head, still unsure where this was going.
“The thing inside you,” the child said. She pulled her hand from his, laying it flat against his chest. “I can give it the strength it needs…the strength you need…”
“What are you…” Remy started to ask, as a surge of something entered his chest.
He cried out, falling backward as something exploded inside him. He lay in the rubble-strewn hallway, the sound of magickal conflagration happening all around, and felt the fires surge inside him.
“What did you do?” he croaked, his body now racked with incredible pain as the spark of the Seraphim surged hungrily to life.
“I’ve given it what it needs,” the child said, barely able to keep her eyes open, her head lolling to one side. Her skin had taken on a sickly gray pallor, more like cold stone—or wet clay—than flesh.
Fire trailed from Remy’s fingertips, but it was a fire the likes of which he had never known. It was a fire fed by life, and it burned hotter and faster than the divine fire that had been stolen from him. It filled his mind with the experiences of thousands, pieces of their lives; moments of tenderness, joy, hope, fear, misery, and sadness. All these were now his, part of the fire that fed his angelic nature, making it drunk on the life forces of thousands.
It took everything that Remy still had to keep his power in check; it wanted to explode from him, to wreak vengeance on those who had humbled it so. It wanted to make them all pay.
And while it was at it, it would make the world pay.
“No,” Remy roared, flexing the muscle of his will. He had finally unified his dual natures and was not about to let that of the Seraphim rip free now, no matter how much this new power desired to do so.
Remy had fought too hard to make this so.
Angelina looked even worse than she had before, her once-beautiful dark hair now dried and brittle like straw and falling from her head as the life left her.
“It will soon be dark for me again,” she said, withered hands playing feebly with a clump of hair that had fallen into her lap.
Remy breathed in and out, holding on to the power—to the myriad emotions that threatened to push him over the edge.
“But that’s all right,” she told him. “As long as we were able to stop this….”
The building violently shook, dust and pieces of ceiling raining down, as the shadows around them unnaturally started to expand.
“As long as you are able to stop this.”
He felt compelled to hold her as life ran out, and he knelt down amid the rubble and put his arms around her.
“The angels’ message was a lie,” she told him sleepily. “But I heard another.”
Remy looked down at the artificial child, startled to see that her childlike features were now completely gone. It was like he was looking at the beginning of a clay sculpture, the rudimentary shape implying that it would soon resemble the human form.
“There was another message,” Angelina said, a blocky hand of clay now reaching up to rest on his shoulder. “And I think it really was from Him…from God.”
Remy was silent, feeling nothing but sadness as this special life-form readied to leave the world.
“And He told me what to do,” she whispered softly. Eyes that were little more than dark impressions in the clay but still somehow able to convey emotion gazed up at him.
“He told me to give it to you,” she said. “To give you the power…that you would know…”
The child went quiet then, and he knew that she was no longer with him. Gently he set the primitive clay shape dressed in a little girl’s pajamas down on the ground, showing as much tenderness as he would have shown any once-living thing that had just sacrificed so very much.
The battle continued to rage on the floor above as well as inside him. The Seraphim inebriated on the sustenance of life wanted to join the fray, to smite the wicked for what they had done.
But the Seraphim was blind to the true strength of the power it would be up against, power that easily rivaled its own. He needed to be careful in how he dealt with this.
Leaving the child’s body to the encroaching shadows, he climbed the broken steps toward the battlefield, Angelina’s final words echoing at the forefront of his mind.
He told me to give it to you…that you would know.
As Remy reached the studio floor and witnessed the terror that was unfolding there, he hoped that the child’s faith in him…that His faith in him was not in vain.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
He hadn’t expected to wake up facedown on his living room floor, the droning sound of a television test signal buzzing in his ears.
Steven Mulvehill rolled onto his back and sat up, a wave of dizziness and intense nausea almost putting him down again. As he sat there, he felt a tightness on the skin beneath his nose and carefully brought his fingers there to find a wet, tacky substance that was revealed to be drying blood.
“What the fuck?” he muttered. Sure that the swimming in his head had passed, he attempted to stand. Swaying slightly, he stared at the television screen and at the message displayed there: We are temporarily experiencing technical difficulties. Thank you for your patience!
He remembered the child on the TV and how she had begun to speak, and then he remembered nothing. In his gut he knew that she—the child—had something to do with what had happened.
Mulvehill walked drunkenly from the living room into the kitchen, tearing off a sheet of paper towel and sticking it beneath the faucet to wet it. He wiped the drying blood from beneath his nose. The droning alarm of technical difficulties was replaced with the sound of voices, and he returned to the living room to see if there was any explanation for what had just occurred.
There was only one anchorperson now, and she looked a little worse for wear, her blouse and normally perfectly coiffed hair disheveled. He had to wonder if the same thing that had happened to him, had happened there in the studio. In the back of his mind he remembered a story about a Japanese television broadcast of some cartoon show that had triggered seizures in many of those who had been watching.
Has something like that happened here? he wondered.
He caught the tail end of the anchor’s explanation about losing the signal from Angelina’s broadcast, but she then began to talk about breaking news: There was an emergency being reported at the Hermes Plaza, where the child had been delivering her message.
Mulvehill was riveted in place, standing in the center of the living room as a live shot filled the screen. It was an aerial view of the Plaza, the focus on the smoldering upper floor of the Hermes office building. Mulvehill gasped at the sight, his mind already trying to fill in all the gaps of what could possibly have happened. Through the smoke he could see the twisted wreckage of the rooftop, girders bent by some powerful force sticking up through the thick, billowing smoke. Mulvehill found himself moving closer to the television screen, trying to make out what was happening through the smoke. There was a sudden flash behind a billowing gray cloud and the rumble of what could have been an explosion. The picture suddenly went to hissing static, the signal from the helicopter’s camera failing.
But not before he saw something that turned his blood to ice.
Smoke was pouring out from many of the Hermes Building’s shattered windows, but there was also something else. At first glance it could have been mistaken as smoke, thick and black, but Mulvehill noticed that it hadn’t moved the way it should have. Just as the image had gone to static, Steven Mulvehill saw the strange blackness flow out from one of the windows, dripping down the front almost like wax from a melting candle.
It wasn’t natural, and he felt that familiar surge of panic come upon him as he remembered his experiences of late. He looked toward his living room windows at the sun shining outside his Somerville apartment, and he could have sworn t
hat he heard screaming.
Mulvehill closed his eyes and saw the darkness running down from the skyscraper, slithering like a thing alive.
The disheveled anchor had returned, talking about what they believed was happening down in the Copley Square area, that the Hermes Plaza had been cordoned off by the fire department and police, and that they were still trying to determine whether this was an accident or something of a more malicious nature.
He had turned off the TV before he even realized that he was doing it. His hands were shaking, and he craved a drink like never before.
It would be so easy to put a stop to these feelings, he thought. A few quick gulps of whiskey would do the trick nicely. He already imagined the warm sensation in his belly as the booze took effect.
But it didn’t change the fact of what was happening at the Hermes Plaza.
He’d seen it on the television, and now, as much as he’d like to, he couldn’t un-see it.
What happened to me is now going to happen to others, he thought, imagining the darkness as it spread down Boylston Street, doing God knew what to whoever it encountered.
Mulvehill was terrified, but he had been terrified since his collision with the supernatural more than two weeks ago.
There was a moment of temptation where he almost picked up the phone to call his friend, to call Remy Chandler to ask him if he’d seen the news, but he managed to stop himself.
As far as he knew, this wasn’t about Remy. It was about him and the world he lived in, a once-secret world that from what he had just seen on the television was no longer hiding.
Hiding.
Mulvehill knew that this was what he had been doing: hiding himself away from the reality of it all, hoping that it wouldn’t come for him again.
He was still scared but he was also angry, which was a good thing, because he was finally feeling something more than overwhelming fear. Mulvehill embraced the anger, fueling it with the shame he felt over hiding away in his apartment.
He knew the fear would kill him if he let it, slowly eating him away, making it so that he would be forced to leave the job that he loved. For how could he be a cop if he was afraid of what could be around every corner, hiding in every shadow?