The face of Remy Chandler as he must have been at one time.
She was drawn to the angel and saw with surprise that there were tears on his face as well.
Tears for a fallen foe.
And her heart nearly broke as the fearsome warrior dropped to his knees before his dead enemy and wrapped his armored arms around him, pulling him close.
Crying for what had been done.
For what had been lost in war.
Ashley was suddenly falling again, the golden fields of Heaven dropping out from beneath her.
She was in another place now, but knew it to still be Heaven. The war had ceased, but things were forever changed.
Behind her was a city of such size that it seemed to go on forever in every direction. Somehow, she knew this was the capital of the Holy Kingdom and that it was called the Golden City.
In the distance, a lone figure walked through the city’s white stone gates. There was a weariness to the figure’s posture, to his plodding step, as he walked away from the grandiose city.
It was Remy, a Remy whose face was slack, devoid of emotion. Ashley knew why he looked that way—the war had taken nearly everything from him. And even though it was over, and the Morningstar vanquished, Remy and the place that he had called home had lost too much.
Ashley watched him as he passed by her, leaving the world of Heaven to find his way to Earth, where he sought to hide himself, to think, and to heal.
She had never really understood how long Remy had been around—how old her dearest friend actually was—and she marveled at the snippets of the long life he had lived, and those he had helped as he became more enamored with the most fascinating and intricate of God’s creations.
And as she watched, she saw him change, going from the pitiless warrior striking down enemies even though they were his brothers to a meager shell of what God had created, to finally something more than what he was and what he had been.
The emotion filled up her eyes again as she watched a Remy with whom she was oh so familiar wearing the guise of a Boston private investigator on a very specific day on Beacon Hill.
A day when he had befriended a scared little girl who had just moved in with her family and helped her catch her cat, Spooky, who had escaped during all the activity.
She remembered the day, each and every detail, as he introduced himself to her and became her friend.
And she his.
• • •
Linda accepted that she was falling through darkness and that this was all part of the game.
This was all part of making her Remy well.
She had no idea how it long it was that she fell; it could have been minutes or it could have been days.
Even so, the transition was abrupt, and it took her a moment to process it. One moment, she’d been falling through an endless night; the next, she was sitting in a center aisle seat in a beautiful old theatre.
She remembered a theatre very much like this. When she was a little girl, her grandmother had taken her to downtown Boston to see a show; she actually looked around to see if her grandmother was with her now. She wasn’t, and in fact Linda was the only one present in the former vaudeville house.
She began to wonder what she should be doing, when the velvet curtain covering the stage parted to reveal an enormous movie screen. A projector snapped on from the back of the theatre and covered the screen with a bright white light.
A show was about to begin.
Linda felt like her childhood self again, mesmerized by the luminescent screen, anxiously anticipating what she was about to see. Her mind drifted back to that special afternoon with her grandmother, remembering that the movie they saw was a rerelease of
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
.
This movie began with no credits, no list of stars, no title, but somehow Linda knew what it was about and already felt herself enraptured by it.
It was the story of an angel who became a man due to the love of humanity, and most especially the love of a woman.
Linda was overwhelmed by a tidal wave of emotion as she experienced the life and love that Remy Chandler had shared with wife, Madeline. It was the kind of love that everyone wished for: transformative in its intensity, yet completely mundane at times.
It was as love was supposed to be, a thing as necessary as food and air.
But it was so much more important to the angel called Remy, for it was his anchor, keeping him rooted in the world, a constant reminder of what it was to be human.
Without it, another side of him might rear its head.
Linda was dreading what was to come, wishing that she might change the narrative as it unfolded before her.
But that wasn’t how the story went.
For with great love, there also came great sadness. The woman who was the angel’s world became sick, withering before his eyes. And he was powerless to stop it.
All he could do was watch as the love of his life passed away, taking a large part of his humanity with her.
He began to wonder if being human was worth the pain. Maybe it would be easier to become what he had been created to be: a messenger of Heaven, a soldier of God, unburdened by the crippling emotions of love.
But as he loved Madeline with all that he was, Remy grew to realize that he also loved this world, and all its imperfections as well, and he decided—even though it would be difficult—to stay, to find a way to be human again.
The angel did just that, living in the world, taking from it all that it offered, and learning all over again the joys of the earth and its inhabitants.
And learning to love once more.
Linda could not help but smile when she saw that the angel eventually found love again—that
she
was that love.
As she stared at images projected upon the screen before her, she made a promise to the angel—the man she loved—that she would be his anchor.
That she would never let him go.
• • •
Marlowe did not care for this falling feeling, and he growled and whined and barked and yipped his disapproval, hoping that somebody—
his Remy
—would answer his cries.
Finally, he stopped falling and sat in the darkness, waiting. And then a light shone on the one place he loved almost as much as his home and Remy’s bed.
The Common.
Marlowe loved the Common. The Boston Common, he’d heard it called. But the Common was what he knew it as. What Remy called it when he asked if Marlowe would like to go for his special walk.
A special walk to the Common.
And the answer was always yes. Yes! Yes! Yes! Rain or shine, it was always yes.
Marlowe eyed his special surroundings, surprised that there seemed to be no one else around—no people—no dogs—it was just the Common.
The wonderful Common.
With total freedom, the Labrador took off across the great green expanse, running as fast as his four legs would carry him, stopping only to inspect the base of the occasional tree, sniffing wildly for scents that he knew.
Squirrels. Rats. Other dogs.
He lifted his leg and urinated, letting everyone know that he had been there and that at that very moment, this tree and the area around it—the entire Common really—belonged to him.
To Marlowe.
The dog took off again, the joy in his freedom flowing through his body—his legs—making him feel as though he could run forever and ever. There was nothing that could catch him and nothing that he could not catch.
The Common was his alone.
And it was that realization that stopped him. He sat on one of the many paved paths, panting, scanning his most beloved place.
The reality of the situation surprised him with its intensity. Here he was at the Common, not having to share anything—the trees, or the grass, or any delicious trash that might have missed going into a barrel—but it wasn’t right. For this to be everything that he wanted it to be, he needed his master.
He needed his Remy.
In the distance, near a fenced playground, he saw a hint of movement and at once focused his gaze. At first he believed it to be children playing, but saw instead that it was a man—a man with his dog.
Excited, Marlowe bounded across the grass, barking wildly. But they did not seem to hear or see him.
The man was tossing a green tennis ball for a puppy—a black dog, just like Marlowe—who eagerly chased the ball and brought it right back to the man.
And as Marlowe stood there, his tail wagging furiously, an understanding of what he was seeing blossomed within his simple dog mind.
This was a memory—his own memory—of when he was just a pup.
He watched his Remy, desperate for him to be real and to acknowledge him, but he knew that this Remy could not see or hear him.
This is a reminder,
Marlowe thought, watching the two at play—watching as an unbreakable bond formed between him and his Remy.
Remy was his everything. There would be nothing without Remy.
His Remy defined him—his existence. His very world.
Remy was his world.
And with that realization, the memory of their time together faded like the early morning mist that sometimes floated above the Common, and in its place grew a tree. A tree unlike any Marlowe had ever seen in the Common, yet somehow—
Familiar.
As he padded closer, the Common shifted around him, changing, becoming a landscape totally alien to him, but it did not deter him.
The tree was why he was here.
From the shadows at the base of the growth, Marlowe saw two figures emerge, and he knew that this was right.
Ashley and Linda smiled when they saw him, and his tail wagged so very hard that it made his entire back end move from side to side. They embraced him, loving him with hugs and kisses that made why they had come here to this spot—to this tree—all the more important and special.
They had all come for Remy.
F
rancis stepped through the vertical slash he’d made in reality and into the back parking lot of a storage facility in Brockton, Massachusetts.
The passage hissed and crackled as if in protest, but Francis wasn’t listening. Instead, he was committing to memory the crudely drawn images on a map that would eventually lead him to the Bone Master assassins.
On reflex, he looked around to make sure that his unconventional arrival hadn’t been noticed, and made his way to his rented storage shed.
For payment of services rendered—
What had he done again?
—Simeon had allowed him to see the map. It wasn’t all that large, drawn upon the tanned skin of an unbaptized newborn with the blood of the child’s mother. Simeon mentioned that it had been made by a fifteenth-century Satanist by the name of Hotinger, who believed that he’d channeled the ghosts of a religious sect targeted by the Bone Masters at the turn of the century.
The ghosts knew where the Bone Masters’ weapons originated and had supposedly passed the information on in hopes of having their murders avenged. Francis wasn’t sure if the murdered order had ever gotten their revenge, and he briefly wondered if he might be doing some angry ghosts a favor.
He stopped at the door to his storage unit, removed a small pocketknife from his pants pocket, and opened the blade to slice the pad of his thumb. Blood as black as tar bubbled up from the cut, and he allowed some of it to flow into the keyhole before sticking his thumb in his mouth to stanch the bleed. There was a loud click, and the lock fell away. He caught it in his other hand and jammed it into his pocket, then lifted the corrugated metal door to enter.
The unit was much larger on the inside than it appeared, an attribute for which he’d paid a magick user handsomely when he’d realized that his weapons collection was getting a bit out of hand. He flipped the switch on the wall next to him and fluorescent lights illuminated the cavernous space, filled with rows of metal shelving. Quickly, he slammed the door closed behind him.
Inside the space, surrounded by so many of the deadly things that he loved, the fallen angel began to think more clearly, formulating a plan that he hoped would save his friend’s life.
He reached into that bottomless inside pocket of his suit jacket and found his phone. He couldn’t remember the number off the top of his head, and truth to tell, he had never planned on using it again, but the current situation required him to rethink his past decisions.
He scrolled through his contacts, found the number he needed, and hit the button, listening to the phone ring on the other end for what seemed like forever.
“What do you want?” a voice dripping with angry venom finally growled into the phone.
“You have every right to hang up now, and I wouldn’t blame you,” Francis said quickly.
“You’ve got some nerve calling here after what you did to her,” the voice said.
Francis imagined the guy on the other end snarling, his face twisted with anger.
“You’re right, I do, and I would never even think of doing it if it wasn’t an emergency.”
“Emergency,” the voice scoffed. “I bet.”
“I need her again.”
“No. No way. I’m still paying the price for the last time.”
“I’m sorry, but you know it couldn’t have been helped; there was a situation, and things got out of hand.”
The person on the other end of the phone laughed, but there wasn’t any humor in it. “A situation . . . Do you know what I’ve had to do to get her back to running right?”
“I offered to buy her from you.”
“I could never sell her—especially to you. She hasn’t been the same since.”
“Difficult to manage?”
“Nothing I can’t handle.”
“Doesn’t sound like it,” Francis commented. “Sounds like she’s become quite the handful. I think maybe she got a taste of the wild stuff and liked it more than you care to admit.”
“Don’t you worry about me; she gets more than enough.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“I think this call is done,” the voice said, but there was a hint of something hidden beneath the angry timbre. Something that told Francis that it might not be so difficult to get what he wanted.
“Are you sure?”
“About what?”
“That you want this call to end . . . that you want me to hang up and leave you with—her.”
“She’s been with me for years; why would I have—”
“Admit it,” Francis said. “She’s never been this bad.”
There was a long pause. “And that’s all your fault,” the man finally spat. “If it weren’t for you taking her on that ride—”
“She wouldn’t be so hard to manage,” Francis finished. “She’s getting to be too much, isn’t she?”
Again the man was silent, but this time, Francis could hear the rumbling of a powerful engine in the background.
“Let me take her again,” Francis said, hoping to further weaken an already weak resolve. “It will do her good, and it sounds as though it might do you some good as well.”
“But . . . but what if she comes back . . . worse?” the voice asked, a tremble of fear evident.
“How much worse could she get, really?” Francis asked. “But if it does happen, I promise I’ll help you with her. Do we have a deal?”
“I can’t fucking believe I’m even considering this,” the man on the other end of the phone growled.
The sound of the engine seemed louder now.
“But you are,” Francis said. “And to show what a nice guy I am, I’ll pay you double what I did before. . . .”
“Double?”
“Yeah, and I’ll do my best not to spoil her. Do we have a deal?”
All Francis could hear now was the sound of the engine, rumbling like the purr of some great mechanical beast.
“Well?” he prodded.
“She’s been especially hungry lately. Will you . . . ?”
“Yeah, I will,” Francis said. “I promise to bring her back well fed.”
This seemed to satisfy the owner, and he hung up without saying good-bye. Francis put his phone away and turned back to the vast storage of his collection. There were a few things he had to pick up before going to get her.
Walking to the center of the storage, he stopped, digging through his memory for the layout of the place and attempting to remember where he’d stored one of the Plagues of Egypt.
• • •
Michael turned his head ever so slightly, focusing his one good eye on the still-unconscious Remy Chandler, who now lay on the floor before the archangel’s throne.
He felt a loathing the likes of which he had not experienced since—
In the pool of darkness that collected in the empty socket of Michael’s eye, the archangel saw it all again, as he always did. The end of Heaven brought about by the ceremony of Unification.
The angel shoved a skeletal finger into the empty socket, wiggling it around to disrupt the disturbing imagery for a time. He didn’t want to see any more, preferring instead to focus on the body of his foe lying before him.
He’d thought this angel dead, either reduced to ash in flames that burned hotter than the sun as Heaven and Hell vied for the same moment in time and space, or crushed beneath the rubble of Heaven’s golden spires as they toppled down upon humanity and the cities that they’d built.
But here he was, looking the worse for wear, but alive nonetheless.
At least for now.
Michael had believed his angels had slipped even further into madness when they’d told him they had found another of their kind in the ruins of the city as they’d searched for a sinner who had escaped their clutches. They’d told him that this angel was different, his body covered in sigils of magickal power.
Fascinated, Michael had gone so far as to leave his throne made from the bones of the unworthy, his domicile, to see with his own eyes—
Eye.
Who it was that his soldiers had found out there in the wasteland.
Never could he have imagined this. If God weren’t dead, he would have believed that this was a reward for what he’d gone through since the fall of everything.
The darkness within his missing eye started acting up again, and the angel violently shook his head, attempting to rattle the imagery that had once more started to play in the theatre of his mind.
Michael leaned forward and reached a trembling hand down to the slumbering Remy, pulling at the collar of his shirt to see the markings etched upon his flesh.
Sigils. Sigils of power. He had seen such markings before, inscribed upon the flesh of angels who had sided neither with the Lord God Almighty, nor the Morningstar, during the great war. He’d called them cowards, but they referred to themselves as Nomads—angels who had no real place, wandering amongst the realms of Heaven, Hell, and Earth.
Had Remy fallen in with that craven angel sect? An all-too-familiar rage welled up inside Michael at the thought of those angels and how the Almighty would have forgiven them their indiscretions as well, allowing them back into the bosom of Heaven, if Unification had happened.
But it hadn’t, and the Nomads remained unforgiven as they should have. If Michael had had his way, they would have been hunted down and put to death long ago. For if there was one thing the archangel could not stomach, it was cowardice.
That was the one thing he never would have ascribed to the angel before him; insolence and naïveté, yes, but never cowardice.
The darkness in the socket of his missing eye started to fill with memory again, and this time he let it play out, watching the angel who lay prostrate before him now, as he had been when the Lord God summoned him—when the Lord God had summoned them all. How beautiful they had been; how wondrous it was supposed to be.
Michael snarled. He’d known something bad was going to happen, had felt it tingling in the very fabric of his being, but how could he tell his Creator—his Lord of Lords—that what He was doing would lead to nothing but despair?
The archangel had wanted to be wrong; he really had.
But he wasn’t, and it all went to—Hell.
The angel smiled sadly as the memory played out. He saw the Lord in all His magnificence as He was about to reunify all that had once been and raise humanity to its next level.
A new Heaven to define them all.
Michael had never experienced such bliss as he had at that moment, touched by the power of He who had made it all. And a single thought had run through his mind.
Maybe I was wrong
.
Michael twitched violently as if stabbed, crying out with the sudden savagery of his memory.
It always made him scream, no matter how many times he relived it.
One moment God was alive—one with everything as He brought together that which had been sundered—and the next . . .
There came a sound like something harkening back to the creation of it all, when the Almighty wished something from nothing . . . but this time it had nothing to do with the beginning . . . with life.
It was about the end of it all . . . death.
The sight of his Lord God falling dead on the steps of the Golden City brought steaming tears to Michael’s eye.
The memory was as overwhelming as it always was.
He remembered crying out as he’d turned to the gathered multitude, remembered the horror-filled expressions of those who had come to participate in an event of celestial magnitude, but instead bore witness to an atrocity of cosmic proportions.
He saw them all, their faces frozen in the darkness of his memory.
Had any of them been responsible?
It was a question he believed would never be answered, for he’d thought those whose faces haunted his memories to be as dead as the God who’d created them.
Or were they?
Michael looked down upon the angel Remiel.
“Time to wake up, Remiel,” the archangel said, willing what little divine fire he could muster into his hand as he grasped the angel’s throat.
And the air was filled with the hiss and stink of burning flesh.
• • •
He remembered the feeling. There was nothing quite like it.
It aroused every sense; he could smell it in the air, feel it beneath his feet and through everything he touched, hear it with sounds like the planet’s largest symphony tuning its instruments, and see it—
One only had to look into the sky to see it.
Remy saw through the eyes of someone else’s memory, but that someone just happened to be another version of himself.
The realization caused an increasing wave of discomfort, a horrible burning sensation that threatened to draw him from the wonderful memory of how it had been when Heaven had made its presence known to the world.
He remembered how he’d left his home on Beacon Hill, going out into the streets as nearly everybody else on the Hill had done. They were all just standing there, looking up into the sky above them. It was still blue, with gorgeous, puffy white clouds that looked as though they’d been torn from bales of cotton, but there was something else.
Something else behind the sky.
Remy had known what it was, and he’d suspected that many others who gazed upon it knew as well. Perhaps they knew it by a different name: the Hereafter, Utopia, Providence, Elysium, Canaan, Zion . . .
But all were the same place.
The place in which the Creator dwelled.
Heaven.
Remy recalled people crying as they looked upon it, some dropping to their knees and praying. Others just laughed, and smiled, and hugged one another, sensing that this was a special time.
And it was. It was a time that Remy had believed he would never see.
“What is it, Remy?”
asked a familiar voice from behind him.
He’d felt Marlowe’s cold snout nuzzling his hand, as he’d turned to look upon the visage of . . .
Madeline, his wife. Alive.
The memory became suddenly . . . wrong, reminding him that this wasn’t his memory, but the memory of another . . . him.
Although he had to admit she’d never looked more beautiful as she’d stood there upon the steps of their home, the ravages of old age and cancer not evident in any way whatsoever.
The sight of her was better than . . . better than Heaven in the sky above.