“No, I’m good.”
“Suit yourself.”
His eyes still on the open doorway, Mulvehill listened to the sounds of Squire as he reached the next floor below, continued down the short hallway, walked across the living room, and . . .
Steven wasn’t quite sure what he heard from the tone of voice that wafted up from below.
“Mulvehill, you might want to get the fuck down here . . . now!”
The goblin sounded like he might be upset. More upset than there wasn’t any pasta in the cupboards, or that they were out of spicy brown mustard.
No, this sounded more trouble-filled than that.
Mulvehill made sure that he had his gun as he sprang down the stairs, the pain in his back all but forgotten.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Remy and the others followed Azza and the Nomads deeper into the ruins of the city.
It was like looking at a patchwork quilt, nothing really matching but still forming something altogether—
New.
They passed a section of unearthly structures that appeared to be carved from the blackest obsidian: probably buildings from the re-created Hell. And those alien superstructures swiftly gave way to the ruins of a coffee shop, then a popular chain drugstore.
Remy turned, looking past the children of Samson for Baarabus. He hadn’t seen the great dog since their conversation with the Nomads.
“I wouldn’t worry about him,” a voice said from his other side.
Remy glanced over to see the Fossil, his face scab free and moist with bloody raw flesh. For the briefest of moments there was a flash of recognition, but it was fleeting, evading Remy’s grasp as it disappeared as quickly as it had come.
“I haven’t seen him since we left the Filthies’ encampment.”
“Yeah, he was pretty upset, but he’ll get over it,” the Fossil said.
Remy turned back to watch the Nomads as they navigated the ruins, staying close to the shadows in case somebody—or something—might be watching.
“I feel like I have a lot to apologize for,” Remy said. “But at the same time, I haven’t a clue as to what I did.”
The old-timer chuckled, and Remy looked at him inquisitively.
“Sorry,” he said, wiping away some blood that was trickling over his brow. “But when you were down in that pit and tapped into your divine power . . . ,” the old man began.
Remy looked at him with uncertainty. “There’s something wrong with it.”
“Yeah, there is,” the Fossil said. “And judging by the way you looked, it was obvious you had no idea.”
They had progressed into an area where huge trees, right out of an evil Disney forest, had started to grow, pushing up through the streets, skeleton-finger branches intertwining to form a kind of canopy above their heads.
The Nomad leader stopped. “We’re close now.”
Remy stepped closer to the Nomads. “Where exactly are we going?” he asked. “You said you were going to get us away from the Filthies and further our journey, but you never said to where.”
Azza seemed amused, but any attempt at an explanation was interrupted by the sounds of a battle from somewhere behind them. Nomads and Samson’s children alike turned as one toward the noise, tensed and ready to face whatever danger was approaching. Grunts and growls gave way to screaming and then sudden silence—until something moved in the shadows, something large and powerful.
Remy realized what it was—who it was—before Baarabus sauntered out of the darkness, the neck of a Filthy clutched in his mouth, dragging the body with him. The demon dog dropped the mangled body at Remy’s feet.
“Found this guy spying on you and decided to surprise him.”
“Surprise,” Remy said aloud, looking down at the twisted angel’s corpse. This one had strange circular markings on its forehead and cheeks.
“It’s a scout,” Azza said. “Michael and the Filthies are probably not too far away. When this one doesn’t report back . . .”
“They’ll be on our tails,” Remy finished.
“Yes,” Azza responded.
“Then we should probably get going.” Remy looked at the group, and they all nodded their agreement. Even Baarabus.
“And where is it that we’re going?” Remy asked again.
“To find a door,” the Nomad said, turning away and leading them beneath the branches of the skeletal trees. “A door to fit your key.”
• • •
They’d been walking for hours when Remy began to see the fatigue in Samson’s children: the way they walked, the dullness that had appeared in their eyes. They may have been super strong, but they were still human, and humans needed to rest.
He’d convinced Azza to stop for a while, and they’d found a place to set up camp under the remains of a stone bridge. Remy guessed that at one time a river or stream had run beneath it, but now there was just dirt and rock. He also found it strange how the groups had segregated themselves—the Nomads clumped together on one side of the camp, Samson’s children on the other side. Even the old man sat off by himself, tending to the scabs that grew like moss upon his body.
Remy caught Leila’s eye, and she quickly looked away, which immediately drew him to her.
“Are you guys all right?” he asked as he approached her. They were eating some provisions that looked like tree bark, boiling some water that they’d found in an overturned light fixture. Remy had no recollection of any recent rain, but then again, he’d been himself for only a short while.
“We’re good,” she answered, eyes darting to her brothers, who watched her from their fire. They didn’t appear all that thrilled that Remy was talking to one of them. “Just not very happy with you at the moment.”
“With me? What did I do now?”
“It’s what you didn’t do,” she corrected. “They think you didn’t do enough to save Dante.”
“I had no idea what I was doing in that pit,” Remy confessed. “They’re probably right.”
“They’ve seen what you can do,” she told him. “It was like you were holding back.”
“Maybe I was. I had no idea what happened to the power of the Seraphim inside me.”
Leila seemed confused at first, but then remembered. “Right, you’re not you.”
“I did what I could,” Remy said. “If it wasn’t enough . . .”
“They’ll get over it,” she interrupted. “Isn’t like this is the first time we’ve lost a brother.”
Remy could feel the others’ icy glares on him. “You should get back to them.” He turned to leave.
“You might want to figure it all out,” Leila called after him.
He turned to face her.
“Figure it out?”
“You know, what we’re supposed to do when we get there, wherever there is.” And without waiting for a reply, she returned to her brothers’ fire.
Remy watched her for a few minutes, thinking about her words, then walked toward the Nomads where they sat together, gazing up into the Heavens, or at least whatever remained up there.
“What can we do for you, Remiel?” Azza asked without turning around.
“I need you to tell me what I don’t know.”
“But you do know,” the Nomad leader said. He stood and slowly turned, the others following suit. “It will take some time, but the knowledge is there, waiting to be used.”
“I think it would be nice if I could use it now.”
“After the failure of Unification,” Azza began, “we believed that the end of our kind—that the end of all things—was inevitable.” He stared at Remy with eyes that were suddenly alive with power.
Remy felt the sigils on his body begin to tingle and burn, and he ripped open his shirt to see them raised like welts on his flesh. “What are you doing?”
The Nomads opened their robes then, exposing similar tattoos on their own pale flesh.
“We are sharing,” Azza said. “Showing you that the answers are there, that you ne
ed only to be patient—the true plan will be revealed.”
Darkness welled up from their bodies, forming a cloud of writhing black that drifted above Remy’s head.
“You were that answer for us, Remiel.”
The cloud fell, engulfing Remy’s face. He tried to scream, but his cries were absorbed by the shroud of shadow.
“You were the answer to the end . . . as well as the beginning.”
The Nomads wanted him to remember, their strange magicks urging him toward what was too devastating to recall.
Remy’s thoughts were filled with the end, and the closer he got to them, the more pain—the more terror—he felt.
All he knew was that the worst possible thing had happened.
He was tempted to go there, again and again, like a curious tongue probing at an open sore in one’s cheek, the pain so intense that he could not fully explore the magnitude of the wound.
Remy drew back from the memory, only to find another level of catastrophe waiting underneath. He was trapped, his body crushed beneath the weight of ruins, the pain beyond the highest magnitude.
Is this it? he had wondered as he’d lain paralyzed in the darkness. Is this how it ends?
The darkness was warm and comforting as it tried to pull him down, telling him that yes, this was how it should be. That this was the end of him, and all things.
Flashes cut through the darkness, sparks, like pieces of flint rubbed together. Inside the sparks, Remy saw the love of his life, Madeline. The cancer had almost taken her, but Remy had made a deal with Death itself—the angel Israfil—to keep her with him. He saw his beloved Marlowe, the purest beast he had ever known. The level of love he felt for the animal who had taught him so much about appreciating life was like a force unto itself. And then there were flashes of the world that he’d come to love and call home, and the people who lived in it; his friends, clients, and even those he had yet to meet.
They were all there in the cool, comforting darkness—and they told him that he couldn’t give up on everything he’d learned to love so much.
Remy used those sparks to reach out to his own inner fire, to rouse the power of the Seraphim within him. The power was very slow to respond, and he had to coax it forward, and when it did finally arrive, it was but a shadow of its former self. It was wild, unfocused.
Insane.
It was all he could do to control it. And Remy suddenly realized that he was afraid of it, afraid of what the divine power had become—afraid of what it could do.
He roared like a wild beast as the unbridled power radiated from his body, turning to rubble tons of rock that had fallen upon him. He spread his wings and surged upward, bursting through to the surface with something very much akin to a birth cry.
But upon witnessing his surroundings, he saw that birth—life—had nothing to do with what he was experiencing. The world was in ruins, the cries of the living—dying—a deafening cacophony.
This was . . . this was Unification gone horribly wrong.
Remy wanted to cry out—to scream his question into the ether. What had happened to cause such a thing?
Again his brain attempted to take him there, and again he refused to see—it was too much to bear.
The darkness invited him back down into the comforting rubble of the world, but he remembered those who depended on him, those he’d always protected from things such as this. With wings afire, he launched himself into the smoke-filled air, soaring through a sky choked with the ashen remains of civilization.
And as far as the angel could see, there was nothing but death—this was the fate of the world.
Tears blinded him as he choked on the dusty remains of those who once thrived upon this planet. The emotion was like an arrow to his chest, and he dropped from the sky, crashing onto a car roof, the windows exploding outward in a shower of prismatic glass shards. He wanted to stay there upon the twisted metal roof, to curl into a ball and let the darkness take him. . . .
But he needed to find the ones he loved.
He did not even question that they wouldn’t be all right as he rolled off of the crushed vehicle and began to run. The streets were clogged with burning pieces of Paradise, the golden spires of Heaven fractured, raining down upon the world and crushing cities beneath their immensity.
Remy had no idea how long he wandered the twisted landscape. It could have been minutes or days—sometimes it felt like it was forever. Time really didn’t seem to matter much in this new reality. Sometimes he flew, sometimes he walked, sometimes he crawled, but he never gave up the search for his home, for his loved ones.
The brownstone seemed to appear out of nothing, rising up from the smoke, damaged beyond repair but mostly standing—almost as if he’d finally built up enough strength to will it into existence. What he saw gave him hope. Remy spread his wings and flew in through a hole he found in the wall leading to his living room. His heart sank as he saw the extent of the damage, the floor having collapsed to the basement below.
He remembered calling out their names—Madeline! Marlowe!—but the only response was the death moans of a dying world. The darkness began to call to Remy once more, and he considered ending his life by flying into space, and then to the heart of the sun.
But then there came another sound.
It was barely perceptible, and he strained to hear over the worldwide cries and prayers of those who still lived.
It was a whine . . . an animal’s whine.
Marlowe! he screamed as he began to tear at the layers of flooring that had fallen into the basement, tossing them aside with a display of superhuman strength. His wings pounded the air, blowing away lesser pieces of debris.
It was the body of his wife—his Madeline—that he found first. She had been dead for some time, her skull crushed beneath a pile of bricks.
Her face . . . her beautiful face.
Kneeling in the rubble, he forced himself to remember her as she had been, retrieving every single moment they had shared during their wonderful existence together. He pulled her limp and broken body into his arms and held her close. Silently he apologized for not having been there when the world ended, and begged for her forgiveness, so very sad that this time, there was nothing he could do to bring her back.
So lost in grief was he that he had forgotten about that first soft, pathetic cry.
Until he heard it again.
Gently setting down the body of the woman he had loved with every fiber of his being, Remy began to look for the source of the sound, hoping for a glimmer of joy amongst this sheer misery.
The angel cried out as he lifted a section of wall to find Marlowe. The dog still lived, but only barely. Remy knelt beside the animal, the human emotions that he had crafted over the years in full bloom. Marlowe opened his eyes and looked at Remy and, as injured as he was, still wanted to know if his Madeline was all right.
“She’s fine,” Remy lied, as he gently stroked his head.
The dog was trembling, not from cold but from internal injury, and Remy knew that it wouldn’t be long before . . .
He couldn’t stand the thought. To have already lost his wife and now to be losing his best friend was more than the angel could bear, and he felt his psyche begin to crumble. The dog moaned, and Remy reached down to pull the broken animal into his arms. He could feel Marlowe’s life force waning. He bowed his head, placing his brow against the dog’s cheek. He wanted to feel everything he could before it was gone.
Marlowe was suddenly awake again, fighting to hold on to what life he still had. “Why?” he asked. “Why you not here?”
Remy wanted to explain, but the words would not come, for he was ashamed. He should have been there. He should have been with the ones he loved most at a time like this. All he could do was silently look into the poor animal’s eyes as Marlowe’s life force gradually ebbed way.
“Stay with me,” he commanded his friend, his emotion gradually turning to fury. “Did you hear me, beast? I told you to stay!”
/> But the last of Marlowe’s life energies dwindled like the smoke from an extinguished candle. And just as they were about to be gone altogether, the Seraphim called out for help.
That was when they came, rising up out of the shadows of the basement; the Nomads had been listening.
Remy knew them at once.
“Is it true?” one asked as he stepped forward, his voice filled with wonder.
Remy could feel himself slipping, the divine fire at his core raging to be set free. He wasn’t sure of the question, but . . .
“Yes,” he replied anyway, the weight of his response crippling.
The Nomads looked up from the shattered basement, up through the floor, to the levels above.
“It is true,” the leader said.
“It is true,” repeated the others as one.
The leader stepped closer and placed a hand on Remy’s shoulder. “You said that you would do anything.”
The spark of Marlowe’s life was nearly extinguished, and Remy did not have the strength to live without him. “I would,” he agreed, pulling the dog closer, hoping that would somehow give Marlowe a bit more time—a bit more life.
“We can save him, and you.” The leader’s touch was cold, a numbness radiating from his hand down Remy’s shoulder, into his chest.
“I don’t want to be saved.” Remy buried his face in the black fur of his dog.
“Yes,” the Nomad leader agreed. “But we do. . . . We will be part of the ending and this new beginning.”
Remy looked up at the hooded angel standing beside him. The leader’s face was pale, the darkness around it filled with twinkling stars so beautiful, and yet so very cold.
“I don’t understand.”
The Nomad smiled. “You will,” he said. “But first you must tell us yes, that you truly do want our help. . . .”
“Yes,” Remy said before the leader was even finished. “Yes.”
“And second, you must prepare.”
Remy held his dog tighter, willing the animal to hang on for just a moment longer. “Prepare?” he asked.
“You must be ready,” the Nomad leader answered, slowly nodding his hooded head. “For there will be sacrifice.”