A Deafening Silence In Heaven

  The words spilled from Remy’s mouth. “The Lord God stole from you? And you decided that ending the world would be an appropriate response?” he asked incredulously.

  The man thought for a moment, looking briefly back to the moment of God’s death. “In hindsight, I guess it did get a little out of hand.” He shrugged. “But I swore that . . .”

  “You swore?” Remy interrupted. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

  The man smiled sadly. “After all this time, I’d probably have to say yes.”

  A fiery rage surged up inside Remy and he felt his body tense, ready to spring.

  “You’ll stay right there,” the man ordered, and again Remy’s eyes fell to the ring upon his finger.

  He felt as though his feet had been cemented into place. “That ring,” he said, his eyes locked upon the silver piece.

  “This old thing?” the man said, raising his hand. “I’ve got two of them.” He raised his other hand so Remy could see the pair. “The rings of Solomon—one controls the angelic, and the other, the demonic. I could not have achieved this greatness if it weren’t for them.” He laughed proudly. “Created by Solomon and Heaven itself to maintain balance between good and evil, but instead they helped me to achieve my most cherished desire.”

  “Who are you?” Remy asked with a snarl, the crazed Seraphim within him threatening to explode from his body.

  “I was nobody,” the man said. “A nobody named Simeon, until the Lord God Almighty stole away my chance at bliss . . . ripping the euphoria of being one with the universe—with God and Heaven—from my grasp and sentencing me to an everlasting eternity of misery and pain.”

  Simeon glared at him with an intensity that Remy could feel, and finally, the angel understood the extent of this man’s madness and rage.

  “Then I became something more . . . something terrible.” He paused as if remembering where he’d come from and where he had ended up. “Someone who made it his purpose to take away God’s joy, to tear down everything that He had built.”

  Simeon looked around at his surroundings and then back to Remy.

  “And I couldn’t have done it without you.”

  Remy seethed, fighting against the magick of Solomon’s ring, but it was to no avail.

  “At first you were a nuisance, sticking your angelic nose into things that really didn’t concern you, but eventually I began to see where you might be a benefit instead of a hindrance.” He smiled at Remy. “You became my secret weapon, Remy Chandler.”

  “How could I not have known?” Remy asked, more to himself than to Simeon, shaking his head in disgust. “How could I not have known that someone like you existed?”

  Simeon laughed again, holding up his hand and wriggling his fingers. “Because I didn’t want you to,” he said.

  Remy’s body vibrated with fury. “So, what now? You’ve accomplished your heart’s greatest desire; where do you go from here?”

  Simeon began to pace. “An interesting question,” he said. “And one I’ve asked myself repeatedly.” He stopped before the frozen visages of God and the Morningstar. “When is it enough?”

  He turned his head to look at Remy.

  “They’re not quite dead,” he explained. “The bullet you fired could only do so much damage.” He smiled again and then chuckled. “He is God, after all.”

  “He’s still alive,” Remy whispered, staring at the image of his Creator. And suddenly, he knew why he had traveled so far.

  “Still alive and, most important, still suffering.”

  Remy could barely comprehend the madness that was coming from the man’s mouth.

  “That’s right,” Simeon said. “As far as I’m concerned, He just hasn’t suffered enough.”

  Remy began to scream, his rage roiling up from within. “How dare you! To think that your petty issues are somehow worth the price of all this.”

  “They are, and more,” Simeon spat. “But I’m not surprised that someone like yourself is incapable of understanding the level of offense . . . of betrayal. He was my God, and I loved Him with all my heart and soul, and He was supposed to love me, but instead He cursed me to an eternal life where the promise of euphoria in the bosom of His love was dangled in front of me like a carrot.”

  Simeon was nearly hysterical. He lunged toward Remy, his face mere inches from Remy’s own. “I can make you understand,” he said, his eyes wild and insane.

  Remy had no idea what was to follow as Simeon stepped back.

  “I’ll teach you the pain of betrayal.”

  He walked to the edge of the stairs and looked out over the broken ruins of Heaven.

  “He’s here, Francis,” Simeon called out. “The one who took away your forgiveness. Come to me, Francis.” He played with his ring. “Let me give you your prize.”

  Remy could hear the sound of something approaching, crying and mewling like some sort of wretched beast. He didn’t want to believe. . . . He didn’t want to see.

  Simeon turned to stare at Remy, that smug smile upon his face. “He’s coming, Remy. And I’m sure he has much he’d like to say to you.”

  A ragged and bloody hand appeared over the side of the city’s base. Remy didn’t want to watch, but he had no choice. The Guardian angel Fraciel, fallen from Heaven during the Great War, a fallen angel that Remy knew as a friend, hauled himself up and stood, tattered and bloody, before them, madness burning in his eyes.

  “There, Francis,” Simeon said as he played with the ring of Solomon. “There is the one who murdered your God. Show him how you feel.”

  Francis bared his teeth in a snarl of animalistic fury and charged.

  “What did you do?!” he screamed, lunging at Remy, knocking them both back and over the side of the floating island that the Golden City had become.

  “What did you do?!”

  Francis’ mind was filled with acid; acid and broken glass and spiders and explosions—lots and lots of explosions.

  It had been like that since . . .

  Since Remy had done the unthinkable.

  He saw it again inside his head. God was going to make it all right; God was going to forgive them all their trespasses. He was going to make Heaven whole again. . . . He was going to make him, Francis—Fraciel—whole again.

  Francis couldn’t have imagined anything more wonderful. He hadn’t been the greatest of angels, nor the worst, in all seriousness, but he knew that he had done wrong and understood that he must pay for his sins.

  And pay he had, over and over again, but when the Morningstar returned, and Hell began to change under Lucifer’s restored might, Francis had been abandoned, left to sink or swim in the shifting landscape of Hell.

  He thought he was going to die then and had pretty much accepted his fate—Que sera, sera, as Doris Day once sang. It was okay.

  But then he’d been saved by the very one who had betrayed the Lord God and who had originally led Fraciel down the path to banishment.

  Lucifer Morningstar had saved his life, and for that Francis had no choice but to serve him. And serve him he had, all the while hoping and believing that it might lead to something—

  Eventful.

  And it had at that—the Lord God saying to the one who was once His favorite, You shall be forgiven and your kingdom will be joined to mine.

  And here was the kicker . . . the most glorious of kickers: The Creator had also planned to forgive all who had once fought with the Son of the Morning.

  All would be forgiven and things would return to the way they used to—were supposed to—be.

  The Almighty called it Unification, and Francis said, I’m there.

  And he was, as were all the angels of Heaven as well as all those who wished to be absolved of their sins. It was the most monumental of occasions, and Francis remembered what it was like to truly be a part of something far larger than he.

  But as the Kingdom of Heaven was about to be restored, and all those who had fallen so far from the path were to be forgiven, somet
hing happened. Something that put acid in his brain, then added glass and, for good measure, a heaping portion of spiders. And that was all before the explosions began.

  Remy . . . his dearest friend in all the world . . . Remy had done the unthinkable. It still didn’t seem true, but it was—the spiders told him so.

  When all was about to become right again, Remy had taken Francis’ weapon, the gun given to him by Lucifer Morningstar, and had used it on him—shooting him square in the chest and nearly ending his existence. Francis liked to think that Remy had shot him that way on purpose, not wanting to harm his closest of friends.

  But it was what the Seraphim had done next that caused the acid to bubble and the spiders to scream.

  Remy had used the Pitiless to murder God.

  And that was that.

  There were no two ways about it.

  Simeon was right; Francis had no choice.

  He had to kill Remy.

  It was only fair.

  They bounced onto a floating piece of the Golden City, rolling across its cracked and brittle surface before tumbling over the side and crashing to the ground below.

  All the while Francis was screaming, a mournful wail that filled Remy with great sadness.

  “Why did you do it? Why? Why? Why?”

  Remy wanted to answer, tried to answer, but the blows raining down upon his head made it difficult to respond intelligibly. Instead, he planted a foot against his friend’s stomach and kicked, hurling the former Guardian angel away.

  “Francis, you have to listen to me,” Remy said, jumping to his feet, preparing for what was to come next.

  “No, I don’t,” Francis said, looking around the rubble-strewn ground and finding something that brought a twisted smile to his face. A sword.

  The blade was black and tarnished as if left in a fire too long, but Francis raised it high above his head as he leapt toward his nemesis. Remy grabbed a piece of stone that was floating by and used it as a shield to meet the sword’s descent. It shattered the stone but gave Remy enough time to leap out of the way before it could cleave his skull in two.

  “Always thought you were the good one,” Francis continued to shriek, swinging the blade again. “The one we could all aspire to be like!”

  The blade whispered as it passed over Remy’s head, setting Francis off balance and giving Remy an opportunity to smash a jagged rock into the side of the fallen angel’s head.

  “Please, listen,” Remy begged as his friend dropped to his knees with the blow. “You have to trust me! I wasn’t in control! Please! It’s so fucking complicated!”

  Francis quickly recovered, tackling Remy and bringing him down in a heap beneath him. “It doesn’t change the fact that it was you who took it all away!”

  He wrapped his hands around Remy’s throat, pulling him up and then slamming him down, again and again. Remy tried to break the grip, but the fingers locked on his flesh dug in so deep they were like a part of him.

  “You killed them all!” Francis wailed. “You murdered everyone . . . everything!”

  Remy tried to tap into the fire that raged deep inside him, but he couldn’t, for the savagery of Francis’ attack was relentless.

  And the sweet, sweet voice of oblivion called to him from not so far away. Remy considered the offer of her embrace, her promise to take him away from all the pain that he had caused.

  All he had do was take her hand.

  • • •

  Simeon hadn’t been that amused in ages.

  From atop the stairs leading into the Golden City, he watched the two angels fight.

  “That’s it, Francis,” he encouraged. “Show the murderer how much pain he’s caused.”

  Simeon had always suspected that Remy Chandler would find his way back here, to the scene of the crime, so to speak. There was a part of him that wondered why he hadn’t just ordered the Seraphim to slay himself. He really didn’t have an answer, but the additional amusement did bring him some joy.

  Francis continued to pummel his friend, the fight really seeming to be one-sided. It wouldn’t be long, Simeon guessed, before the former Guardian angel slew his friend.

  Finally tired of the fight below, he turned back to the petrified visages of Lucifer and God.

  “I see what You did,” he said, directing his words to God. “Somehow You managed to reach out to Your warrior angel and call him here.” Simeon strolled closer, his eyes never leaving the one he hated most of all. “I’m not sure if that’s even possible, but it makes a good story, doesn’t it? The last vestige of the Lord God Almighty calling upon the one who struck Him down. Calling upon him to somehow right the wrong, to pull victory from the fire.”

  Simeon laughed. “There will be no victory from this fire,” the forever man said with an enthusiastic shake of his head. “Your attacker . . . your pathetic pawn . . . will meet his fate at the hands of his friend, and things will return to the new normal.

  “You know the new normal, don’t you?” Simeon smiled. “It’s what I’ve put into place . . . as Your reality slowly fades away and dies.”

  The forever man stopped, digging his hands into his pockets as he considered his next bit of musing.

  “I wonder,” he said. “When it’s all gone . . . when it all winds down, will You cease to be? Will it all blink out like someone turning the lights off? Will I cease to be, for that matter?” He couldn’t help but smile again. “I’m excited to see what happens.”

  He’d started to pace again, when his foot struck against something that skittered across the rubble-strewn ground, glittering seductively.

  “What do we have here?” Simeon asked, bending down to pick up the weapon that Remy had dropped. “Ah, would you look at this—the murder weapon, so to speak.”

  He chuckled, presenting the gun to God and Lucifer.

  “Your lackey brought this,” Simeon said to Him. “And why is that? Was this supposed to help You? Was he supposed to finish what he started?”

  “You mean what you started,” said a voice from nearby.

  Simeon spun toward the sound, the gun instinctively pointed at the man who stood there, his skin covered in weeping wounds and scabs.

  “Who the fuck are you?” Simeon demanded.

  The bloody man smiled.

  “Wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise,” he said as he lunged.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Remy wasn’t alone in the embrace of darkness.

  He’d at last succumbed to the paltry promise of unconsciousness but was startled to see that he wasn’t alone in the cool world of shadow.

  “Hello?” Remy called to the indistinguishable shape hunkered down across from him.

  “I was curious if you’d ever get here,” said a voice, strangely familiar.

  It almost sounded like . . .

  The shape became more defined as it rose and crossed the darkness toward him. The figure raised its hand, and it began to glow faintly, chasing away the shadows.

  Remy stared at the man across from him, for a moment believing that he was staring into a mirror.

  “What’s happening?” Remy asked, as much to himself as to his doppelganger.

  “Where should we begin?” his double responded. “You’re being murdered by your insane best friend, and that’s just for starters.”

  “You’re me—the other me,” Remy said, staring at himself.

  “Yeah, I’m the one who got evicted from my body so you could come in.”

  “Evicted?”

  “Yeah. I was probably going to die anyway, but instead I ended up here—waiting for you.”

  “You’re the one who murdered God.”

  Remy’s other self became very quiet, as if thinking about that statement.

  “It’s not easy to live with that knowledge,” he finally said.

  It was Remy’s turn for silence.

  “It’s like a cancer inside you, the darkness growing until it consumes just about everything you ever were. The fire of the divine
corrupted into something else.” He touched his chest, his fingers moving beneath his shirt, opening it to reveal the dark sigils tattooed on his chest. “After a while, it takes some doing to keep it locked away, and eventually . . .”

  “You can’t,” Remy answered for him, feeling the madness of the Seraphim writhing inside of him, feeding upon the misery of the world he’d become trapped in.

  His other self looked at him knowingly. “Eventually, it just gets to be too much; the loss . . . the weight is too great.” He paused, his words seeming to have a physical effect upon him. This version of himself, somehow smaller.

  “It breaks you . . . and then you fall.”

  Remy wasn’t sure how to respond, to look at himself and see himself—broken.

  “But that’s where you come in,” his double said. “With you there’s still a chance. As much as we’re the same, we’re not—it’s the little differences that separate us. You haven’t done what I did in my lifetime. . . . You’re still whole—a little cracked, a bit bent, but you’re still whole. With you, there’s still a chance to fix things.”

  From somewhere in the darkness Remy heard the sound of pounding surf and moaning winds. It reminded him of a place very important to him, a place of reflection and healing.

  Remy.

  Remy thought he heard his name called on a distant wind and began to move deeper into the darkness in the direction of the sounds.

  But a hand gripped his arm, stopping him.

  “Not yet,” the other Remy said. “There’s still work to be done.”

  Remy strained his ears to hear more, but the darkness had grown sadly silent. “I have to go back,” he said, trying to pull away.

  “Better you than me,” his other self said.

  “If I do this,” Remy said, “if I’m able to fix things . . . will I get to go back to where I’m supposed to be?”

  The other Remy had turned and was walking back into the shadows. He stopped, as if considering the question, then continued on without answering.

  Perhaps he did not know the answer.

  But then again, maybe he did.

  • • •

  The Fossil’s true name danced on the tip of his tongue.