“You know you’re totally fucked up, right?” Mulvehill asked, readying his gun for what would surely be another wave of violence.
“Yeah,” Squire answered, stifling his laughter.
“Listen, if this is it, I want to say . . . ,” Mulvehill began, but didn’t get the chance to finish.
“Save it,” Squire interrupted, snapping the barrel of his pistol back into the gun. “I’m not a big fan of last words.”
They were both standing in the hallway now, just outside the bedroom doorway, peering down the stairs. A fine smoke had started to drift up from the living room below.
“So, what do you think we should do?”
“Well, one of us should probably stay up here and protect Remy and the others.”
“Sounds about right,” Mulvehill agreed. The sounds of battle were growing louder, having obviously moved into the living room from the kitchen. “You want to stay up here while I . . .”
“No.”
“Well, I don’t want to stay up here, either,” Mulvehill said. “How about whoever has the most bullets . . .”
“You have the most bullets; we already fucking know that,” Squire said. “All right, whoever has the most bullets stays here.” And the hobgoblin bolted down the stairs.
“No fucking way,” Mulvehill called out behind him as he started down the stairs as well. “If you get killed right now, I’m going to be royally pissed.”
A powerful, blood-covered figure appeared in the living room doorway below them, and Squire fired. Assiel moved his head aside and the bullet embedded itself in the wall behind him.
“Oh shit.” Squire gasped.
The angel glared but was quickly distracted by the Bone Master assassins that threw themselves at him. With a birdlike shriek, he drove them back again with his slashing blades.
“Get up to the room!” he yelled to Mulvehill and Squire.
“We can help,” Mulvehill said, moving forward, his gun ready.
“No!” the angel commanded. “Go to the room and barricade yourselves inside. Awaken Remy’s friends if you can.”
Assiel was wild with his blades, slashing and stabbing crazily, but Mulvehill knew that it was only a matter of time before . . .
Multiple shots were fired and he saw the angel’s skin erupt, blood spewing from the entry wounds.
“What about Remy?” Mulvehill cried as he and Squire began to retreat.
“It’s too late for him! You must try to save those who can be helped.”
• • •
Assiel heard the human and the hobgoblin race up the stairs again. He chanced a final look over his shoulder and saw them standing in the doorway.
“No worries,” the angel tried to reassure them. “At least this time I die on the side of the righteous.”
And with those words, his allies slammed closed the door, and the angelic healer turned his full attention to his foes.
The Bone Masters had massed in the living area, watching him with cold killers’ eyes, smiles on some of their twisted faces. He knew what they were waiting for; he could feel the effects starting to overcome his body.
The very poison that had rendered the Seraphim Remiel so close to death now coursed through his own body. And he knew not how much longer he had before he would succumb to its deadly effects.
Assiel had always wondered when and how his death would come, knowing only that it was inevitable. He’d always been shocked that he hadn’t died in the Great War. The Lord God Almighty had been merciful to him afterward, allowing him penance upon the world of man. The angel had indeed recognized the error in his judgment, even more so after coming to understand humanity and their special place in the heart of God.
And now he knew.
The angel stumbled into the nearby wall. That seemed to make his killers all the more excited, slowly moving toward him en masse, their weapons clutched in their filthy hands. It wouldn’t be long now, this he knew. There was a burning numbness in his limbs and joints, making his appendages feel as though they weighed tons.
His vision was beginning to fail, but he could see their numbers as they spread out through the house. There were still too many of them, even though he and the others had taken down quite a few.
He needed to cull the herd, so to speak, and he needed to do it quickly, before he was unable to move. Gripping his twin blades all the tighter, he pushed himself away from the wall and advanced toward his foes.
The Bone Masters stared at him, and he knew they were wondering if this old fallen angel still had any fight left in him.
Assiel smiled and tossed back his head, letting go a shrieking cry of war before leaping at his foes. Did he still have any fight left in him?
Oh yes, he most certainly did.
• • •
Ashley guessed that she must have been dozing.
She seemed to be having one of those strange dreams, the kind that seemed so real that the dreamer had no idea she’d fallen asleep. In the dream it was July, and she was sitting in Remy’s tiny backyard, Marlowe snoring noisily at their feet. They were talking about the future.
“Four more years of school,” she’d told him.
The angel was reclined in a folding beach chair, a Sam Adams Summer Ale clutched in one hand, listening to her intently as she laid out her plans for the future.
It was what she did every night before bed, to help her fall asleep. She planned.
“And after the four years?” he asked, bringing the bottle to his lips.
She preferred Mike’s Hard Lemonade to beer, and drank from her bottle before answering his question. “Well, then I’ll get my teacher’s certificate, and then I’ll get a job.”
“In the Boston school system?”
“If I can. Sure.” It sounded good to her.
“And what if there aren’t any jobs?” he asked.
“Then I’ll get a job someplace else.”
“You’d move from the area—out of state, even?”
She’d already thought about that very thing. “Sure I’d move, if I have to.”
Remy made a face and drank some more beer.
“What?” she asked him.
“Moving out of state,” he said, making that face again. “What would your parents think?”
She thought for a moment. “I don’t know. I don’t think they’d care all that much. Remember, I’m an adult now . . . and by then I’ll be practically elderly.”
“True.” Remy nodded slowly.
She had some more of her lemonade. “Will you come visit me at the nursing home?” she asked with a chuckle.
His whole expression changed.
And then she remembered Madeline, and how she had passed away in a nursing home.
“Oh, Remy, I’m sorry!” Ashley exclaimed.
He smiled at her, but there was sadness in it now, no matter how hard he tried to disguise it. “That’s all right,” he said. “Just feeling a little sensitive these days.”
“It must be hard,” she said.
“What’s hard?”
“To watch time pass by, unaffected, while everything else . . . everybody else . . .” She stopped, realizing she was heading into that dangerously sad place again. Good one, Ashley, she thought. He’d already said he was feeling sensitive, and she had to go poking at the wound.
“You have no idea,” he said, and she saw a look in his eyes that she’d never seen before, a glimpse of something that suggested he was far sadder than he’d ever let on, that maybe he couldn’t take it anymore.
“Are you ever going to leave, Remy?” she asked suddenly.
“The Boston area?” He forced a smile, but it was clear he knew what she’d meant.
“Would you ever go back . . . to where you came from?”
He’d started to peel the label from his beer bottle. She was going to press him for an answer, but she could see that he was still thinking.
Then after what felt like hours, which were probably only seconds—uncomfortab
le seconds, but seconds nonetheless—he answered.
“This is my home now,” he said. “I couldn’t imagine returning to . . . that.”
And that made her smile.
“Good,” she said, finishing up her lemonade. Marlowe lifted his blocky head from the grass and gave her a look. She left her chair and settled on the ground next to him.
“Don’t tell me you’d be sad if I left,” Remy said. He’d seemed to have shucked off his serious side and was smirking. “You who’s going off to school and will probably move out of state—out of the country, even—over the next four years.”
She was rubbing Marlowe’s nearly hairless tummy, the dog having rolled onto his back for her to be able to reach all the good parts. She was suddenly feeling very serious, imagining what it would be like—what her world would be like without Remy.
“Don’t you dare ever leave me, Remy Chandler,” she said.
And he smiled at her, a smile that told her he never would, and she had felt safe in that knowledge until—
Something felt wrong with the tree.
Ashley slipped from the dream to . . . where? Where was she?
She was in a panic, eyes darting around until she was able to collect enough of her thoughts to remember. She was in that place . . . the place somehow connected to Remy’s life force, and she, and Marlowe, and Linda . . .
“Linda,” she said aloud.
She looked around, remembering that Linda had left them, gone down into the hole that had opened up at the base of the tree, and . . .
Marlowe was standing away from the tree, looking off at something in the distance.
“What is it, boy?” she asked. She pulled her hands away from the trunk of the tree, where they had been pressed. They were wet, covered in a thick, black substance, like liquid darkness.
The dog was looking out over the Common, the hackles on his thick neck raised, and as she looked as well she could see why.
The Common was dissolving. At first she thought it was some sort of fog, drifting over the landscape, obscuring her view, but then she realized that wasn’t the case at all. The Common appeared to be breaking apart and floating away.
“That can’t be good,” she said, and Marlowe began to whine.
“No,” Ashley ordered, furiously petting his head, eyes still on the horror in the distance. “No crying. There will be no crying of any kind, or I will most certainly be crying as well, okay?”
She spun to look at the tree and felt as though she might throw up.
The tree was melting, rivulets of black liquid running down the trunk to the base, saturating the ground and making the hole where Linda had gone seem larger.
The world—Remy’s world—was slowly breaking down. Panic threatened to grip her, but she tried to keep it controlled.
Until she noticed something from the corner of her eye and glanced at her hand. It, too, had begun to dissipate.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” Ashley raced to the enlarging hole and dropped to her knees, Marlowe right beside her.
“Linda!” she screamed into the darkness.
Marlowe barked madly, his barks echoing in the bottomless black.
“Linda! Something’s wrong! Remy’s world—it’s breaking up, Linda! It’s breaking up!”
She looked up and saw that it was getting worse, the world—the Common around her fading away to—
Nothing.
“Please, Linda—you have to come back. . . .”
Ashley was crying now.
“Please! . . . I don’t know what to do!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The Queen saw her opportunity and struck.
The angel of Heaven stood there, his weapon pointed, but he did not fire. She was sure it was because of the sight of her, her awesome visage inspiring sheer, paralyzing terror and hopelessness.
How could anyone—anything—stand against her?
The angel struggled briefly as she ripped him from the ground, though not as much as she would have imagined, but she did not give him another opportunity to strike, instead forcing him into her mouth. She had to unhinge her jaw to make him fit, shoving him down past her flapping tongue and into her throat, the powerful muscles of her esophagus gripping the weakly flailing body as it began its descent into her stomach.
The Queen swallowed and then swallowed again, forcing her still-living prey farther and farther down into her body.
She could already feel the power of his divinity, the bubbling juices of her stomach eagerly splashing upward to digest the angel’s body, excited by the prospect of what these divine nutrients would do for her unborn brood.
Since God’s death and the fall of Heaven, it had been her sole purpose to create a spawn—a new Shaitan—for a new world. She had been born in the fires of ruin, rising up to wipe away the old and make way for the next stage in the Shaitan evolution.
What a world they would make, the Queen thought, imagining her babies as they tore from their leathery casings and took possession of the world. With the Creator finally gone, it would not be long before they became gods.
It would be glorious.
The Queen felt hungry once again and quickly scanned the jungle for more prey to sustain her. The survivors of the old Shaitan were around—she could smell their foulness in the air—but there were other scents as well.
Human scents, but not entirely.
There was something exotic about these humans, and she believed that it, too, might be something to benefit her children.
“Come out, humans!” she cooed, moving toward the thick patches of jungle. “It will do you no good to hide from me!” With giant hands she parted huge sections of vegetation, searching. “Don’t make me angry,” she warned. “Or I’ll eat your limbs, one at a time, and save your heads for last.”
She was already drooling as her dark eyes scanned the bushes for signs of movement. There was a rustle of brush behind her, and the Queen turned in time to see a hint of movement, the shadow of something trying not to be noticed.
“Where oh where might you be?” she asked aloud, pretending she hadn’t seen the movement, while meandering intentionally toward the shadowy shape concealed behind the thick underbrush.
She started in another direction, then suddenly dove back at the thick bed of leafy greens and the shape that crouched behind them. Her malicious laugh was cut short, clogged in her terrible throat as she looked upon the unexpected.
Instead of the exotic human morsel that was to fill her belly, there was a beast, black furred and rippled with muscle. It bared its teeth at her, back legs tensing, preparing to pounce.
The Queen barely had time to scream as the demon hound sprang, knocking her backward to the ground, burying its muzzle in the flesh of her belly. She fought valiantly, but the beast’s claws and teeth were sharp, and it clung to her, ripping at her magnificence, feeding upon her flesh.
Feeding upon the spawn that were to inherit the world.
• • •
Remy was dying in the belly of the Queen, even as his mind reeled from the onslaught of memory too shocking to comprehend.
Unification was in full swing, and everything was right in the universe, everything falling into place in perfect synchronization. He had never known such joy, such happiness before.
But then the feelings began, an assault upon his senses, that grating sound of static from a speaker during the most beautiful of symphonies, that slight taste of bitterness in the most delicious soufflé, the faintest hint of decay within the most beautiful of flower arrangements, the sight of that withered and blackened growth finally found in the center of all that beauty.
He looked around at the gathering of divine creatures—those who had been touched by the power of the Lord—and saw that they were all as he wanted to be, part of the sacred ceremony.
Why couldn’t he be as they were? At one with the process—unified.
As the digestive fluids inside the Shaitan monster were burning him, eating at his clothes
and the flesh of his body, so was his mind being broken down.
Evil.
It was as if somebody had pushed the fast-forward button on a video player, and his memories jumped ahead. Chaos was erupting in Heaven.
From such beauty, wonder, and awe, there was now only sheer terror. Unification was in turmoil—total disarray.
A writhing, shrieking black cloud exploded up from the green of the Garden, a swarm of life that should never have been given the chance to exist.
Shaitan.
The proto-angels filled the air with their rage and hate, attacking the most holy ceremony.
Was that what happened? Was it these foul creations that brought it all down? Remy tried to hold on to the tattered memories as they burned within his brain.
He curled himself tighter within the belly of the Shaitan Queen, the juices of the creature’s stomach consuming him.
It was chaos, what had once been nigh perfect, now pandemonium. Remy tried to find some serenity within the discord.
And he found it in the eyes of God.
The being who was the Creator of it all stood within the confluence of chaos, a calmness in the eye of the storm.
The old man, the one who had warned Remy of the coming of war.
Was this the war He’d spoken of?
Remy’s and God’s eyes met, and in that moment . . .
Inside the stomach of the Shaitan Queen, Remy was close to dying. The acidic liquids he floated within were completing their purpose, using him to feed the unborn Shaitan, to make them strong.
Strong.
Remy tried to hold it together, to be as calm as God was, but something was wrong—something far worse than what he’d felt, heard, smelled, and seen.
He ripped his gaze from the eyes of God and looked upon the bedlam, finding the one for whom he searched.
His friend and confidant—the fallen angel Fraciel.
Francis.
And in the hand of his friend, he held the gun.
It wouldn’t be long before the corrosive juices finished him, and Remy desperately wanted to let go, for he feared the memory that was to come. If he could only hold it back for just a moment longer, it would be gone—he would be gone.