It wasn’t going to be pretty, but he needed to know.
A brief blast of foul-smelling steam escaped into the atmosphere, and Francis wrinkled his nose in disgust.
But the knife found what it was seeking, as it sank into what remained of the attacker’s brain, drawing up information and feeding it to Francis in a series of staccato images. In a matter of seconds, he knew about the demonic assassins known as the Bone Masters, how they’d been contracted to kill Remy Chandler . . .
. . . and how they had hoped to use the angel’s female to lure him into the open.
Francis pulled the knife from the skull, gazing at Linda, who returned his stare with deer-in-the-headlights eyes.
The angel’s female?
CHAPTER TWO
The Old Man had done something—sent Remy to someplace, someplace where he could see the price of his failure.
It had been like falling into a hole, the darkness so all-encompassing that it became the world, and the distance so deep and far that he forgot he was falling.
Until he hit bottom.
Remy landed in an explosion of pain. The world of cold primal darkness that had been with him for what seemed like an eternity was replaced with a jarring agony. From his internal workings, to his bones, to his every joint, muscle, tendon, and ligament—everything was screaming.
A painful reminder that he was still alive—
And under attack.
Remy opened his eyes, and immediately knew that he was in another place—another reality, familiar yet strangely different. Winged forms flew above him in a gray, smoke-filled sky. Angels, he thought, watching one of the shapes bank sharply to the left, wings spread to their full impressive span as it glided down at a breakneck pace.
But questions of where he was and what was happening would have to wait, for a hissing gout of flame rocketed toward him from the sky. Remy reacted even though his body cried in protest. He rolled across the rubble-strewn ground as the miniature comet struck mere inches from where he’d been, melting the surroundings to glass.
A spark of divine fire landed on the sleeve of his coat, the heavy material beginning to burn as the holy flame sought out the soft flesh beneath. Remy slapped at the fire before it could grow any hungrier, and what he saw on the back of his hand chilled him to the bone.
A tattoo of some kind appeared to be permanently inscribed upon his flesh. He did not know what the mark was or how it had gotten there, but could sense that it was a sigil of some long-forgotten power.
“Move your ass or you’re toast!” commanded a gruff, almost animal-sounding voice from somewhere close by. Remy didn’t have an opportunity to find the source of the command, but he did what he was told as spears of fire hurtled toward him.
Incendiary blasts struck all around him as he darted and weaved about the blighted landscape. So intent was he on avoiding the Heavenly fire that he did not see the body smoldering on the ground before him, and he tripped, falling onto his stomach, the air punched from his lungs as he hit. Scrambling to rise, he glanced at the corpse, recognizing the dead man as one of Samson’s children, somehow knowing that the Biblical strongman and his brood had once again come to his aid despite the near certainty of catastrophic failure.
The air was filled with acrid smoke and the heavy, dusty smell of something . . . familiar. It was that intimate aroma that froze him in place. It can’t be. How is this possible? he thought, his mind racing as he tried to process the overwhelming flow of information into his already addled brain.
An angel dropped from the sky, its powerful wings kicking up clouds of dust and dirt as it touched down before Remy. He stared, hypnotized by the creature he would once have called brother. It was covered in a thick coating of black ash, with fish-belly white skin peeking out from cracks in the filthy covering, but it was its eyes that told Remy a story he did not care to hear. The eyes were filled with madness, what divinity had once pulsed through its holy body having long since fled.
He wanted to ask it what had happened, what horrors had occurred to make it this way, but Remy knew that it was about to kill him.
Twin daggers with blades as black as the soot that covered its body appeared in the angel’s hands, and it lunged at Remy, eager to vent his body to the outside world.
Remy tensed the muscles in his back, wishing his wings into existence to evade the blades—
And nothing happened.
He did not have time to ponder this latest insanity. The filthy angel screeched something unintelligible as it thrust with one of the knives. Remy managed to leap back, the edge of the blade catching the front of his shirt and slicing across his belly.
The angel cried out as the scent of Remy’s blood perfumed the acrid air. The other blade was eagerly coming around for more of the same. This time, Remy caught the angel’s wrist and twisted it back behind it, pulling up savagely until the sounds of snapping bone and sinew mixed with the angel’s cries of pain.
The knife fell to the ash-covered ground, and Remy snatched it up. The blade felt wrong in his grip, as if the weapon did not care to be held by anyone other than its owner. The intense burning sensation came next, causing Remy to drop the black-bladed knife to the ground as he gazed at the blistered flesh of his palm.
The angel started to cackle as it came at Remy again, still gripping the other knife, one arm now useless and dangling at its side. On reflex, Remy again called upon his wings, and again he could not summon them. The horror of his new reality grew even more oppressive as he braced himself for the angel’s further assault.
Something huge and incredibly fast suddenly moved past Remy in a blur, landing upon the angel and driving it back to the dirt. The air became filled with the sounds of growls and screams of pain, which grew louder and more intense until silenced as the monstrosity standing upon the angel’s blackened chest tore away its throat.
Remy stared with equal parts wonder and horror at the great beast that had taken the angel. Two sets of memories—the old and the new—struggled for supremacy, and he thought his skull might split.
The beast’s body was huge, the size of a great jungle cat, with short, black fur covered in filth. The color tickled his memory, and he remembered a part of his life filled with the love and loyalty of an animal named . . .
It spun its large square head around to face him, its muzzle shiny with the blood of the once divine.
“Marlowe,” Remy said aloud as he looked into the face of the demonic hound.
“What did you call me?” the animal asked, its fleshy lip peeling back in a ferocious snarl. “You’re never to call me that!”
And that was when Remy felt it all slide out from beneath him, his brain unable to handle it anymore, deciding that this would be the right time to shut it all down—
To drop the curtain.
To fade to black.
• • •
Heaven had the most distinctive of smells.
Everything else Remy had experienced since leaving the Golden City paled in comparison to the scents of Paradise.
Madeline had once asked him what it was like to be in Heaven. At first, he’d been speechless, unable to find words suitable for the human mind to comprehend.
“Okay, we’ll make this easier,” she’d said. “What’s it smell like?”
And he’d given it a shot.
“You know how you feel when you walk past a bakery and smell the freshly baked bread, or that delicious aroma of a home-cooked meal, or even the wonder of a freshly brewed pot of coffee?”
He recalled Madeline’s magnificent smile.
“Imagine all the wonderful feelings and sensations created by those awesome scents.” He’d paused, watching to see if she was doing just that, and the twinkle in her eye had told him she was. “All right, now multiply all those feelings by a million, and then a million more, and then a hundred million more.”
She’d told him that it must be wonderful.
And he’d remembered that it was—before the
war, before he had abandoned his place of creation.
He’d told her that, and then they had made love with a passion far more intense than ever before, almost as if she was attempting to sate a hunger that could never be satisfied, and he trying to recapture a taste of what he’d abandoned so very long ago.
But all it had done was remind them each of what they would never have.
Now, deep in the darkness, Remy was again reminded of the glories he had left behind, the distant memories stirred by an all-too-familiar aroma.
Even deep within the clutches of unconsciousness, he could smell Heaven. The scent had caught him off guard as he’d tried to defend himself against his angelic attacker. Although tainted by other, more pungent odors, such as fear and despair, at the core of it all, Heaven was there.
Drifting in the air, Heaven was there.
The smell drew him up from the darkness, where he became aware of a strange stinging sensation in his lower body. He gasped, snapping his eyes open to the most insane of sights. The giant doglike animal stood by Remy’s side, his monstrous head lowered to Remy’s bare midsection, a tongue as thick as Remy’s forearm lapping languidly at his stomach.
“What the Hell?” Remy managed.
The beast stopped licking, and his massive tongue returned to his mouth.
“You’re awake,” he growled. “About fucking time.”
The dog moved away from him, dropping his enormous bulk to the ground with a heavy sigh.
Remy looked down at his stomach, at where the dog had been licking.
“What the fuck were you doing?” he asked, touching the tender spot with his fingers. It was still wet and quite sticky, with a nasty stink coming from the area.
“I’ll let you die from infection next time,” the monster dog said indignantly. “Believe me, the taste of your pus is not something that I enjoy.” The beast put his large face down between equally enormous paws. “And fuck you very much.”
Remy then noticed the additional tattoos, across the taut muscles of his stomach, snaking up his sides and down his bare arms.
“When did I . . . ,” he began, struggling to decipher the meaning of the markings but coming up with nothing.
“When did you what?” the beast asked, watching him with curious, blood-tinted eyes. “The sigils? What, did you bang your head or something?”
Remy remembered his wings, or lack thereof. He twisted his head so he might see where they should have been. “My wings. What’s happened to my wings?”
“Your wings?” The dog rose to all fours and cautiously approached. Remy could see the animal’s coppery hackles rising as he sniffed at him. “Are you all right? Maybe that blast took more out of you than I thought.”
Remy almost asked about the blast—what exactly had happened—but decided to wait. “I’m fine,” he said instead, getting up from the blanket he was lying on. He could see he was inside a tent, and he was suddenly desperate to head outside for a look at the world in which he now found himself. A world whose very atmosphere smelled of Heaven.
He found a shirt in a pile on the floor next to him. It was torn and bloodied, but he put it on anyway.
“You don’t seem fine,” the great dog said, continuing to study him.
Remy was saved from replying as the flap of the tent lifted and a dark, bearded man stepped inside. Remy knew at once the man was also a son of Samson.
“What is it?” the demon dog asked.
“You need to see this,” the man said, ducking back outside.
“Stay here,” the dog ordered Remy as he pushed his massive bulk through the flap and outside.
Remy followed, ignoring the command.
The sky was filled with billowing gray clouds that roiled and moved through the air like protozoa viewed from beneath a microscope lens, and Remy wasn’t sure if it was day or night.
The camp appeared to have been set up somewhere inside the crag of a mountain, the edge of the encampment looking down onto a sprawling and unfamiliar desert landscape. But it was the sight beyond the desert that sent a deep, icy chill down the length of Remy’s spine, for now he knew why the air was filled with the scents of his former home.
In the distance were shapes that at first glance seemed to be another great mountain range, but the longer he looked upon them, the more familiar they became.
The reason the air of this place was filled with the smells of Heaven was obvious, for it was Heaven—or at least a portion of it—that Remy saw sprawling across the landscape far off in the distance.
It seemed that Heaven had fallen from the sky.
CHAPTER THREE
The angel’s woman.
The words were like a spear to the heart. It was Francis who had first noticed the attractive waitress named Linda Somerset, notice that had quickly transformed into a kind of obsession with the woman. That had been totally unlike him. Sure, he’d had human women over the centuries, but, with the exception of Eliza Swan, they’d been little more than playthings.
Linda Somerset was the first woman he had taken note of since Eliza, and he had even gone out of his way to point her out to his friend Remy Chandler.
Francis suddenly felt an odd sense of anger and betrayal wash over him as he looked down on the body of someone he’d thought had been his friend. What the fuck were you thinking?
But he would never get the chance to ask that question if he didn’t move quickly. Francis could barely sense the presence of the Seraphim’s life force. It wasn’t much, but it gave him hope.
“He’s alive¸” Francis said to the woman. “But I’m not sure for how much longer.”
“We have to do something,” Linda said. “We can’t just let him die.”
“No, we can’t,” Francis said, pushing past his tumultuous emotions.
“What are we going to do?” Linda asked, panic in her eyes. “Is there someplace we can take him . . . somebody we can call?”
Somebody we can call.
Francis rose to his feet, taking his cell phone from his pants pocket. He scrolled through his contacts, looking for the number he hadn’t used in quite some time.
Physician.
He touched the number and put the phone to his ear, listening as an answering machine picked up.
“This is Francis . . . Fraciel,” he added, using his divine name just in case. “Call me back. It’s a bit of an emergency . . . a matter of life and death. Thanks.”
He hung up, turning to look at Linda, who was now sitting beside Remy, gently brushing the hair from his face, her gaze filled with love and sorrow. Francis felt a wave of anger and jealousy begin to rise within him and quickly tamped it down. Now wasn’t the time for this.
“Who did you call?” Linda asked.
“Someone who can help,” Francis replied, knowing that time was of the essence and hoping that a return call would come.
Before it was too late.
• • •
His true name was Assiel, but he hadn’t been called that in a very long time.
Darnell rhythmically dragged the broom over the old linoleum floor, picking up the wisps of dust that had formed since he’d last swept the hallway of Five South.
To anyone who was watching, it appeared that Darnell—Assiel—was just doing his job, keeping the floors clean at Saint Joseph’s Nursing Home, but in fact, he was listening, attuned to all two hundred and thirty-two residents. Darnell knew every man and woman who called this place home. He knew their aches and their pains, and he knew when it was time for them to abandon their deteriorating shells and rejoin the source of all things.
It was quiet here on Five South, the nursing home’s hospice unit. There were seven residents on the floor, all at various stages of dying, but one was closer than the others, and she called to him now.
Candace Ransley did not ring a bell or call out his name, but she summoned him just the same.
Darnell stopped outside her room and glanced down the hall to see if the nurse or any of the aides were wat
ching, and, finding that they were otherwise occupied, he stepped in.
It was dark in the room, the curtains drawn to keep the sun away. The strains of fifties doo-wop played softly from a radio on the nightstand. Candace loved doo-wop. She’d often asked Darnell if he’d listened to it as a child where he’d come from—he’d told the residents that he was an immigrant from Nigeria. Occasionally he wondered if those he looked out for here—his patients—would have been in any way comforted to know where he really came from.
Many of them believed in a Heaven, but the reality might not have been as comforting as they wanted to believe.
The war was never far from Darnell’s mind, the atrocities he’d seen—and participated in—always there to remind him of his fall from grace. But he had paid the price for his betrayal of the Almighty, first serving time in the hellish prison of Tartarus, and now the remainder of his penance amongst humanity, where he hoped to do some good.
And eventually be allowed to once again bask in the glorious light of the Creator.
But did the Heaven that Darnell remembered even exist anymore?
He stood at the foot of Candace’s bed, clutching his broom, listening to the sound of her labored breathing. As he watched her, he could see how far her sickness—cancer of the lungs—had progressed. It would only be a matter of minutes before her physical form finally broke down and ceased to function.
Minutes normally plagued by pain, fear, and loneliness.
Normally.
Are you ready, Candace? Darnell thought. Ready to leave this moldering shell and join with the stuff of creation?
Her eyes slowly opened, and she looked at him. In response, he allowed her to see him.
To truly see him.
She watched him with tear-filled eyes as he moved around the side of the bed and placed his hand above her chest, his thoughts urging her to not be afraid. Beneath the cancer he saw what the Lord God had given her and all the others that made up humanity: a spark of the divine.