He peeked over the top of the couch, trying to see into the kitchen. It was dark in there now, the Bone Masters probably using the cover of shadow to prepare for their next assault. There was a sudden burst of commotion somewhere inside the room—an explosion of screams and gunfire that illuminated the smoky darkness of the kitchen. Mulvehill could see bodies falling in the staccato flashes of machine-gun blasts and began firing himself, picking off as many of the Bone Masters as he could.
Squire’s head suddenly surged up from the pool of shadow he’d disappeared into, and Mulvehill reflexively swung in that direction, aiming his gun.
“Easy, there, Tex,” the goblin said, hauling his squat body up from the darkness. “This is empty, by the way.” He tossed the machine pistol down and rummaged through duffel bag for something else.
“Any idea how many are left?” Mulvehill asked.
“Too many,” the goblin replieed grimly. “Multiple passages of shadow, all leading into the kitchen. I managed to stop up one of them, but there are too many more.”
“I don’t know how much longer we can hole up here,” Mulvehill said in all seriousness.
“Yeah,” Squire agreed, finding a pistol and loading the chamber with stray bullets from the floor.
Mulvehill was getting ready to use up the last of his clip when he heard a voice from behind him. He and Squire turned as one, aiming their weapons at the striking sight of Assiel.
“It appears that things have grown most dire,” the angel said.
“You might want to get down,” Squire suggested. “They’re firing poisoned teeth, and we already know how you angel guys do with the teeth.”
Mulvehill noticed the twin knives. “What’s up with the knives?” he asked the angel.
Assiel looked at the blades, moving them in such a way that they glinted in the feeble light. “I thought I would assist you.”
Squire chuckled. “What are you gonna do, take their temperature?”
The angel fixed the goblin in a frightening stare. “Just because I’m a healer doesn’t mean that I don’t know how to fight,” he said as he slowly rose to his full height. “Remember, I did fight in the Great War.”
The angel looked out over their cover to the kitchen beyond. “You two might consider heading for cover upstairs.”
“What about you?” Mulvehill asked.
“Me?” Assiel asked. “I’m going to the kitchen.” Then he leapt over the couch and ran toward the room.
And as Mulvehill and Squire moved to the stairs, the screams of dying Bone Masters mingled with an angel physician’s cry of battle.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The Filthies found the Nomads and Samson’s children not long after Remy disappeared behind the door.
They came at the group from the shadows of the city, fluttering upon broken and stunted wings, clutching crude weapons of iron adorned with mere tufts of fire in their pathetic hands.
Azza reached down deep within himself to find the pity. Here were the once divine beings that had ostracized his Nomad brethren and him, called them cowards for not choosing sides during the Great War. Now those who had rejected them suffered the rigors of the future that the Nomads had foreseen, beings of purity and light reduced to twisted perversions of their once divine selves.
The Nomads and Samson’s children stood together as the Filthies drew nearer.
“Shouldn’t we be leaving now?” the one called the Fossil suggested.
“There will be no more running,” Azza replied, staring into the darkness of the ruined city, remembering.
The Nomads had been invited to the Unification of Heaven and Hell, the welcoming of the Morningstar back into the holy fold. They had not accepted Heaven’s invitation, choosing instead to watch from the cities of man.
And as they had awaited the great change, Azza could not help but wonder if this was the end of their brotherhood. With everything unified, a wholeness brought to what was once in disarray, the Nomads would no longer be necessary.
They, too, would be welcomed back to the fold.
They, too, would be unified.
Azza had to admit that something deep inside of him welcomed the change, for he, too, remembered how it had once been, before the war.
The Filthies swarmed, but they did not attack, stopping yards away, shrieking and shaking their weapons.
“So are they going to fight, or what?” the child Leila asked, clenching and unclenching her fists, ready to charge. Her brothers were ready as well, just waiting for the call to battle.
Azza did not answer. Silently he watched as the gathering of Filthies parted in the middle, allowing their Lord and Master to come forth.
The past moving toward inevitable change.
“Where is he?” Michael asked, his scars all the more prominent as he stood there. “Where is the Seraphim Remiel?”
When Heaven fell, it was no surprise.
The Nomads had known that something would occur, but not exactly what. They had been awaiting change, and there it was in all its devastating glory.
And as Heaven and Hell collided, falling in upon themselves and raining down upon the world of man, the Nomads did as they always had. They watched, and they waited.
Searching for a sign that told them what change would be the last.
And from the wreckage of the world, they saw him emerge—Remiel, an agent of change himself. Was it not the Seraphim warrior that had abandoned Heaven after the Great War, choosing instead to live amongst humanity? And wasn’t it Remiel who had inadvertently helped Lucifer Morningstar return to his former glory, leading to Unification and the horrors that followed?
Yes, Remiel—this Remy Chandler—in him the Nomads found what was to be the last agent of change.
Azza considered Michael’s question for a moment before answering. “He’s gone for now.”
“Gone?” Michael questioned. “Gone where?”
Azza recalled the broken creature that had crawled from the wreckage of Unification, a shadow of the glory that had once been. He had lost everything, the façade of humanity that he had worn so proudly, his glorious divinity—his connection to the Lord God, which had always been his right, the fire that was in all the Creator’s winged children, driven to madness by the loss. He remembered how they had approached the Seraphim and offered him a chance to join with them.
And the Seraphim had agreed, for he’d had much to atone for.
That there must come an end, before there can be a beginning.
“There are things that must be put in order before . . . ,” Azza started to explain, but was interrupted by the wailing creak of rusty hinges from somewhere behind him.
“Before what?” Michael demanded impatiently.
Azza and all the others turned away from Michael to look upon the figure of Remy standing just outside the open door. He held in his hand a pistol that glistened as if reflecting the full glory of the noonday sun, but the sun had not shone in this sky for so very long.
“Before he brings it all to an end,” Azza finished, but he doubted that Michael was listening.
“So, what did I miss?” Remy asked.
The Archangel Michael cried out, and the Filthies swarmed, with murder in their soulless eyes.
• • •
Just seeing Remiel standing there with his cocksure insolence was enough to fill Michael with a rage that could scour the world.
Deep down Michael had always blamed Remiel for what had transpired, the Seraphim soldier’s defection from Heaven, the catalyst for what Heaven and the world had become.
If it hadn’t been for Remiel—for Remy Chandler—Lucifer Morningstar would have remained a prisoner in his own mind, never to remember who he had once been, never to rise and pose the kind of threat that would cause the Almighty to consider his forgiveness.
Unification never to be attempted.
Remy Chandler.
Michael had felt in the very fiber of his being that something was not right, that the Almi
ghty’s decision had not been thought out, but who was going to argue with the Creator of all things?
All he could do was what he was told, and watch as it all played out, hoping that his blessed Creator was right . . . that he would be wrong . . . and a new and glorious phase, on a par with creation itself, was about to begin.
Michael still could not remember exactly what had happened. He saw it all in jagged fragments, terrible flashes that left deep and painful scars upon the flesh of his memory. One moment the Lord of Lords thrived, drawing the pieces of a dismembered Heaven together, and then there were the shrieks of war—an attack upon the most sacred of ceremonies. Foul winged beasts filled the air.
He remembered the glint of something golden, the flash of a weapon—a pistol molded from the very essence of the Morningstar. He could not see who wielded it, but God fell as a result of it, with Heaven right behind, and the world of man shattered below.
Michael had believed for the briefest of moments that that was the end, but then he convinced himself that it was a test, that somehow God still lived and was testing those who had survived the failings of Unification.
Those who managed to thrive in this new and twisted wasteland would be ushered into a new Heaven. That was how it had to be.
For why else was he here?
With the sight of Remiel, Michael’s anger flared, and he decided to do what should have been done a long time ago. There was no room for one such as Remiel in God’s new Heaven.
But then he saw what the Seraphim was holding—a golden gun.
And suddenly, Michael believed he knew the answer to the mystery that had haunted him since Heaven’s fall.
• • •
The Filthies came at them in a wave of shrieking ferocity, and Samson’s children charged ahead to their attack head-on, screaming at the top of their lungs.
Remy raised the Pitiless pistol to fire but hesitated as Azza and his Nomad brothers stood in front of him.
“We will handle them,” Azza said, as crackling black energy began leaking from their bodies.
Tendrils of jagged, living darkness leapt from their bodies to ensnare the Filthies as they dropped down from the air upon them. A savage roar temporarily silenced the sounds of battle, and Remy looked over to see Baarabus leaping catlike from a perch on a nearby building’s ledge, to pounce upon multiple Filthies, dragging them from the sky to the rubble-strewn streets below.
Remy stood at the center of the maelstrom, the God-killing pistol still clutched in his hand, and through the madness he saw Michael.
The archangel stood in the distance, a battle between them. Once he had been one of the most handsome and stalwart of God’s creations, but now he was a twisted thing that served only to remind everyone of what they had lost.
A time that had been murdered.
But it also served to remind Remy of the seemingly impossible burden he had accepted—to somehow right this world.
Their eyes locked from across the bloody expanse, and Remy saw a hate that was like a living thing. He was drawn to it, pulled across the combat-filled city street toward the twisted mockery of what had once been a thing of awesome beauty.
The Filthies tried to stop him, but Remy was on a mission, firing the Pitiless pistol and dispatching his attackers with robotic efficiency as he methodically made his way toward their leader. Michael did not flee, damning Remy with his one good eye, the hate leaking from his body like lethal radiation from a reactor breach. But Remy would not be deterred.
A thick gathering of Filthies collected on either side of their master, desperate to protect him. But Remy moved closer, the Pitiless pistol buzzing happily in his hand, glad that it was again serving its purpose.
The Filithies looked to be about to attack when the archangel spoke.
“Join the others,” he ordered. “Die in my name elsewhere,” he added, waving away his protectors.
The Filthies hesitated, staring at their leader in disbelief, but then reluctantly carried out its bidding, hopping and flying off to fight alongside the others of their ilk.
“Is this what you wanted?” Michael asked Remy, the poison of his hate all the more intense.
“I could ask you the very same question,” Remy replied.
“You could,” Michael said, turning his white and damaged eye toward him. “But I wonder if we want the same.”
“I can’t imagine that we’re too far off.”
Michael considered that for a moment. “I want the nightmare to end. I want all of this to fade away like the mists over the fields of grass just outside the Golden City. Do you remember the fields, Remiel?”
Remy could see them, a vision of the past just behind his eyes. “I do. But I also remember them stained with the blood of our brothers.”
It was as if Michael had been slapped, a sneer appearing upon his wan features.
“You remember a time long gone, brother,” Remy continued. “Those idyllic fields, that memory of perfection . . . The War changed all that.”
“It did,” Michael agreed. “But we fought to get them back . . . to make it how it once had been.”
“And no matter how much we fought, how much blood was spilled, it was never the same.”
A rage seemed to descend upon the archangel, the scars on his pale skin growing more pronounced. “He was to blame for that,” he spat. “The perfect child . . . the Son of the Morning. He was always His favorite, no matter how much pain he caused.”
There was some truth to the words, but Remy saw no point in stoking Michael’s simmering fury.
“And look,” Michael continued his rant. “Look at what has happened. . . . Look at what Lucifer has caused.”
“God wanted things to be whole again,” Remy said. “Like you wanted the perfection of the fields outside the Golden City. He wanted it to be that way again, and Unification was to give us that.”
Michael’s face twisted as if he’d been given poison. “Unification killed us all.”
“But it wasn’t supposed to. Something . . . someone . . .”
There were images in Remy’s mind again, flashes of recollection that had no place—no meaning. He saw a man, a pale-skinned man with hair as black as ravens’ feathers.
And on each hand he wore a ring.
“Yes, someone was responsible,” Michael said, dragging Remy from the strange vision.
Michael was eyeing the weapon in Remy’s hand, and he slowly raised it, as if to show him.
“Godkiller,” Michael said.
Remy did not understand.
“Godkiller,” the archangel said again. “All weapons of power should have a name, and that should be its name.”
“Fitting,” Remy said, suddenly no longer thinking of it as Pitiless.
“Is that how you’re going to do it?” Michael asked.
“Do what?”
“Fix things,” Michael replied with a condescending sneer. “Isn’t that what the great Remy Chandler does? Makes things right again?”
“I’m going to try,” Remy said after a moment’s contemplation.
“Will you give me back my fields of gold, Remiel?” Michael asked.
Remy looked at him, remembering what he had once been, and did not answer.
“I had it in my mind that I was going to kill you,” Michael said. “That with you dead, things could move on, that a new Heaven would be given to us—the survivors . . . the faithful.”
“And now?”
Michael looked at him, the hate no longer radiating from his eyes—there was something else coming from them now.
Was it pity?
“It’s not up to me,” the archangel said. He looked past Remy and tossed back his head, emitting a horrible, groaning cry.
The Filthies ceased their fighting and gathered round Michael once more.
“Do you think He could forgive you?” Michael asked Remy as he turned away.
“For failing Him?” Remy was confused.
Michael’s shoulders shook as i
f he was laughing. Without a reply, he continued to walk into the corpse of the city, his surviving legions at his side.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Every time he found himself in the middle of shit like this, Squire promised himself it would be the last time.
At the foot of the stairs leading up to Remy’s bedroom, he turned to see that Mulvehill had stopped to fire his weapon, managing to take out pale-skinned demonic assassins that had made it past the badass angel who was in the kitchen cleaning their fucking clocks.
Squire’s gaze lingered on the cop a bit too long. He was a complete stranger half a day ago, but now . . .
That fucking friend thing always got him. He got attached way too easily; it had been that way with all the others, too. So what if he wasn’t from this world? In this reality, it had provided him with more of a home than he’d had for many a year.
Seeing his own world crumble . . . watching his friends die even as they fought valiantly to turn the tide of darkness: It had almost finished him off. It had become survival of the fittest, and he’d hit the Shadow Paths, trying to lose himself in the dimension of shadows that existed amongst the multitude of realities. Honestly, he’d believed he would live out his lifetime alone, existing in the shadows, but no matter how hard he tried to resist, the various realities—variations of the world he’d loved and lost—always seemed to draw him back.
And there was always heartbreak, and more swearing that he’d never do it again.
And, of course, here he was again.
Squire aimed his pistol, squinted down the end of the barrel, and fired. A demon went down with a head shot, but there were more behind him, and not enough bullets to truly matter.
“C’mon,” Mulvehill said as he reached the hobgoblin, grabbing his arm and pulling him up the stairs.
Now would be the time to bail, Squire thought, seeing only ugliness and more sadness to cope with if he were to stick around. There were plenty of shadows to use for escape. Dive right in and leave the sorrow behind—that way he wouldn’t have to see what happened; it would remain a mystery, like missing the season finale of a favorite show.