“I’m sorry, I . . . ,” Ashley stammered, suddenly terrified that she could have somehow made Remy worse.
“I had no choice,” the man said, again ignoring her words. “I couldn’t fight the pull of your want.”
“My want? I don’t understand. . . .”
“The concern for your lover,” the man explained. “You wanted—
needed
—to know if he would be all right, and I was the source of that information.”
“I guess,” Ashley said slowly, not even bothering to correct the man this time. “So, will he be all right?”
The man returned his intense gaze to Remy. “If things continue as they are, he will leave us.”
Ashley felt like she’d been punched in the stomach.
“Is everything okay, Ash?”
Ashley turned to see Linda and Steven Mulvehill in the doorway to Remy’s room. “Yeah,” she answered on reflex, but then changed her mind. “No, nothing’s okay,” she said, fighting back her emotions.
“Unless . . . ,” the dark-skinned man suddenly said.
“Excuse me?” Mulvehill asked.
“If things are allowed to continue as is, Remiel will leave us—unless . . .” His voice trailed off.
“Unless what, Assiel?” Linda asked.
Assiel turned from the bed and approached them. “The strength of your affections for him,” he said, reaching out to lay his hand atop Ashley’s head, then Linda’s.
Mulvehill tried to move away as Assiel reached for him, but the angel would not be dissuaded. He laid his hand atop the detective’s head and then leaned down to do the same to Marlowe.
“Incredible,” the angel physician said, the hint of a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “It could work.”
“What?” Linda demanded. “What could work?”
Assiel returned to Remy’s side, ignoring Linda’s questions. “Yes, it’s definitely a possibility,” he muttered to himself.
“I swear I’m going to scream if you don’t—,” Ashley started to say, but was once again interrupted by Assiel.
“You could prevent his soul energies from leaving. . . . You can help to anchor him here.”
I
n the beginning, there was the black of nothingness.
But then there was the light. That first spark of brilliance—a thought of creation—sent out into the nothing by the Supreme Power that began it all.
And from that godly contemplation came the beginning of everything.
Thuc Pham sat upon a bamboo mat in a hut in the tiny North Vietnamese village of Nà Bái and watched the creation of the universe unfold.
He had done this over and over again for days, but it never got old.
He pulled the statue of the open-armed infant closer, allowing the influence of the contents stored within the vessel to radiate through his body.
Thuc smiled as he watched the universe take shape, experiencing the exultation of genesis and the euphoria that followed. He was there as a fragment of creation itself fell to the newly birthed world below, where it nestled in the belly of the earth and slept, sated by the fulfillment of its purpose.
Thuc saw all who had come before him, the holy men whose purpose it had been to protect that fragment after it had been taken from the earth. He was the last of such holy men. He had managed to save the fragment from the woman called Delilah, who had stolen it in hopes of reshaping the world in her own perverted image.
Since then, he had watched over the vessel as he and the fragment had wandered the world that it had helped to fashion so very long ago.
And eventually they’d ended up here, in the very place where it had first fallen.
Where it was to now be returned.
Hugging the container to his naked body, he wanted to remember everything about being guardian to a piece of creation itself, before letting it go.
And that was his downfall, for he had waited too long.
Their location had been found.
• • •
Francis stepped from a patch of darkness thrown by the trees of a primordial jungle just beyond the outskirts of the Vietnamese village. Simeon had insisted that that three demons accompany him to Nà Bái, but for what reason, Francis really wasn’t sure.
Maybe it’s a trust issue,
he thought. Maybe Simeon wanted to be sure that he wouldn’t abscond with the artifact that he’d agreed to acquire in exchange for information that could help Remy.
Maybe.
“Looks like that’s where we’re going,” Francis said aloud, as he stared across a clearing at the small rustic village.
The demons remained silent, but their eyes followed his gaze.
“Do you have names?” Francis asked them. “Or would you prefer that I make something up?”
They remained silent, appearing uncomfortable with the fact that he was talking to them.
“For example,” Francis continued, “the first person who comes to mind when I look at you is Buddy Ebsen.”
The tall, lanky demon looked at him with a snarl of confusion.
“Yeah, doesn’t make any fucking sense to me, either. I’m not even going to tell you the name that came to mind when I looked at the chick beside you.”
It was the female that then stepped forward.
“I’m Dorian,” she said, and then hooked a finger toward Buddy Ebsen, beside her. “This is Beleeze.”
“Huh,” Francis said. “And you?” he asked the last of the three.
“Robert,” the demon said.
“Robert?”
“You have a problem with Robert?”
“His name used to be Tjernobog,” sneered Beleeze.
“I can see why you went with
Robert
,” Francis said, turning his attention back to the village. “Okay, now that we’re all BFFs, let’s figure out what we’re doing next.”
The demons silently agreed.
“We’re supposed to be looking for a metal vessel in the shape of a baby, which is in the possession of some Vietnamese guy who has been holed up in this village. Did I get everything?”
The demons stared.
“Thought so,” Francis said. He reached into his suit coat pocket and pulled out a circular metal compass.
“Your boss gave this to me,” he said as he flipped back the hinged golden cover. “It’s a compass supposedly attuned to specific supernatural energies.”
He pointed it toward the village, watching as the needle wobbled within the glass casing before pointing to the left of a Quonset hut at the edge of the clearing.
“And it looks like we need to be concentrating our attention that way.”
Francis began to move into the clearing, checking to see that his demonic backup was with him. They were indeed.
And they were armed to the teeth.
“Seriously?” Francis asked them.
“Not taking any chances,” Dorian said, making sure that her .45 had one in the chamber.
Beleeze held a nasty-looking hooked blade that hadn’t been designed for anything but killing, while Robert held a Glock 18 machine pistol.
Maybe they knew more than they were letting on.
Francis was tempted to take out his own pistol but decided that he would wait.
They rounded the hut into what seemed to be a small community area. One by one, villagers stopped what they were doing and stared.
Francis could sense the tension building in the demonic trio behind him. “Stay cool,” he warned. Then stepped forward with what he hoped was a winning smile. “Hello,” he said in fluent Vietnamese. “My friends and I have traveled a long way in search of a man and the special item that he carries with him.”
He paused to gauge their reactions. Lots of sideways glances and muttering voices told him that they knew who he was talking about.
“Could you point us in the right direction?” he asked. “Would really appreciate it.”
The crowd remained quiet, many returning to the tasks they had been performing when he and the three demonic amigos had arrived.
“Hello?” he called out, wanting to give them another chance before they did this the hard way.
And then he saw the young boy.
He was shirtless, his sunburned skin the color of a penny. He wore a pair of red swimming trunks, tube socks, and ragged sandals, and carried a burlap sack slung over his shoulder.
“Hello there,” Francis said, almost believing that they’d struck pay dirt. “Do you have any information . . .”
The boy sloughed the sack onto the ground in one fluid gesture. As he reached his hand inside the sack, a monkey leapt out and, with a shriek, ran off through the village. Then the boy’s hand emerged holding an old, rusty-looking pistol. Without a moment’s hesitation, he fired three quick shots, hitting Francis square in the chest and hurling him back to the ground.
The demons reacted at once, opening fire on the child before he could shoot again.
“Knock it off!” Francis yelled as he watched the child crumple to the ground. The wounds in his chest were already healing, but they were still painful as he lurched to his feet and stumbled toward the fallen boy.
“You stupid ass,” he scowled.
The boy smiled a bloodstained grin. “He’s ready for you now.” Then he laughed a short, gurgling laugh and died.
The villagers had gathered together, and Francis saw that many carried weapons.
“Something tells me this is about to get complicated,” he said, turning to his demon buddies.
“
Complicated
is for pussies,” Robert said as he raised his machine pistol and sprayed the crowd with bullets.
Through the vessel, Thuc Pham felt a sudden disturbance in the ether, alerting him that trouble had arrived.
Cursing, he released the metal infant, cutting off his wondrous connection to the stuff of creation. How could he have waited so long?
The gunshots outside told him that now he was too late. A nagging voice in the back of his mind said running would only delay the inevitable, but still he attempted escape, quickly dressing and grabbing the vessel.
“Hey, I’ve been looking for one of those.”
Thuc Pham spun around toward the unfamiliar voice from the doorway. A tall, bald-headed figure wearing dark-framed glasses and a three-piece business suit stood there, pointing a golden gun at him.
Thuc immediately felt the fragment within the vessel react to the man’s presence and wondered if this was actually a man at all. In his mind, he saw flashes of a Heavenly city and the winged beings that called it home.
“You’re of Heaven,” Thuc said, believing for a moment that a greater power had been sent to aid them.
The man seemed momentarily taken aback, the barrel of his pistol lowering just a bit, but he quickly recovered. “That was a long time ago,” he said as he raised his gun again. “Put the vessel down and step away from it.”
Thuc did not understand. The fragment continued to bombard his mind with images of the Almighty’s winged messengers.
The power of creation said to trust this man—this citizen of the Heavens—but his actions . . .
Thuc bent to place the vessel upon the hut’s dirt floor, when there was a flurry of movement behind the man at the door.
And the demons stepped in.
Francis felt the stooges step up behind him and watched the Vietnamese man straighten with the vessel and make a run for the open window at the back of the hut.
Francis prepared to fire, but a sudden sense that he was about to do something truly wrong caused his trigger finger to relax.
What the fuck is this about?
the former Guardian angel wondered, feeling as though his brain had just been scorched by fire.
The sound of a gunshot made him jump, pulling him from his troubled thoughts. He watched the man tumble forward to the ground, atop the metal container, as Dorian pushed past him.
“Don’t tell me you can’t shoot a man in the back,” she said with a snarl that showed off delicate, pointy teeth, reminding him of a piranha.
Her partners in crime chuckled as she loomed over the still body of the Vietnamese man.
“Be careful,” Beleeze called out, and Francis got a sense that he really meant it.
She turned to look at him ever so slightly, a hint of a smile playing at the corner of her mouth, before reaching down to turn the man over. But he rolled on his own. He was holding the metal container up toward her, and it had begun to open.
Dorian had just enough time to utter a gasp of surprise as a wave of a churning energy radiated from the parting seams, enveloping her in a swirling cloud that quickly dissolved her flesh and bones. Within seconds she was gone, little more than particles of dust whirling amidst the unbridled power that continued to leak from the vessel.
“No!” Beleeze wailed. “No! No! No!”
He started toward the Vietnamese man, who now knelt with the receptacle outstretched before him, the vertical slit opening wider, sending forth even more of the corrosive energy.
Francis leapt at Beleeze, tackling him before the demon suffered Dorian’s fate.
“No sense in killing yourself, too,” Francis said, hauling the thrashing demon to his feet and attempting to drag him toward the door, away from the expanding cloud of destruction.
“No! I want to be with her!” Beleeze hissed, fighting the former Guardian’s grip upon him.
“We might all be with her shortly,” Francis said.
It was as if the room was being disassembled, broken down to its molecular structure, and scattered to the wind. Francis briefly wondered what it would be like to be uncreated as the power contained within the vessel flowed dangerously closer.
He was about to open an escape portal, but the sight of a figure in the open window behind the Vietnamese man gave him pause. He watched as the figure crawled through the window and crept up behind the man.
A fountain of blood suddenly erupted from the man’s chest, followed by the point of a sword. The Vietnamese man stiffened, dropping the vessel to the floor, where it snapped closed, cutting off the radiance of the power contained within. As if in slow motion, the man slid forward, falling face-first to the floor, revealing the mystery man who had dispatched him, bloody sword still in hand.
Francis immediately recognized him; tall, blond hair, an air of authority about him—but also a stink of the demonic. He’d last seen this man with the Vatican sorcerers, the Keepers, on the Japanese island of Gunkanjima.
But what was he doing here?
The Keeper stared at Francis, his eyes filled with hate, giving the fallen angel a sense that something supremely evil was behind those dark portals.
Saying nothing, the man dropped the bloodstained sword and approached the container. He knelt down, preparing to retrieve it, but Francis still had questions to be answered.
“I wouldn’t do that,” he said, aiming his gun.
The man ignored the threat, carefully lifting the vessel from the floor with a defiant smile.
“It’s quite all right, Francis,” a familiar voice said from behind him. “Constantin works with me.”
Simeon strolled in through the front entrance, his focus on the man holding the object.
“He works for the Vatican,” Francis said. He still hadn’t lowered his pistol.
“You remember that, do you?” Simeon asked.
“I do,” Francis answered.
“I wish you didn’t.”
“What?”
“I wish you didn’t remember him,” Simeon said, twisting the ring on his right hand. “In fact, I’m telling you to forget him completely.”
Francis was suddenly confused, almost positive that he’d been about to ask an important question, but now it was gone.
“What was that?” Simeon prompted.
Francis just stared as he lowered his gun.
“Excellent,” Simeon said. He motioned to a man Francis did not recall seeing enter. “Now let us return home so that I can fulfill my part of the bargain.” Simeon left the hut, the man carrying the vessel directly behind him.
Francis reluctantly followed, the idea that something important had been lost niggling at the back of his mind, but within seconds, that, too, was gone.