And he knew suddenly that it was because of him.
Because of something he had done.
He had broken the rules to keep her with him.
“Isn’t it wonderful!”
she’d exclaimed, gazing up at the Kingdom of Glory, tears in her beautiful brown eyes, clear of cataracts and the dullness of sickness.
And he’d had to say,
“Yes,”
as he looked upon his living wife. It was the most wonderful thing he had ever seen.
There was that painful burning again—like a flaming rope around his throat, distracting him for just a moment.
Until he remembered hearing above the sounds of Heaven, a siren of sorts that spoke directly to him—to all creatures of a divine nature. A siren that called to them, telling them to come, telling them they must bear witness to something of great importance.
Come to Heaven . . . for Unification is upon us.
He remembered how he’d turned to her, his lovely Madeline, to tell her that he must leave her, but promised that he would return.
“And things will never be the same,”
she had said wistfully as he’d petted Marlowe’s head.
And she was right.
The memory—his memory—turned to fire and chaos, the cries of a dying world deafening, his own screams joining the cacophony of the end.
Through the fire he turned to see her standing where he’d left her, in front of their Pinckney Street brownstone, her body engulfed in flames, a grinning skeleton all that remained to remind him of what had been lost.
“And things will never be the same,”
the skeleton of his true love reminded him.
He’d held his hand out and seen that he, too, was in flames, which crawled up the length of his body to consume his human guise and expose his angelic nature to the nightmarish devastation that had changed the world.
Wings covered in fire exploded from his back, stirring the air and scattering the bones of his wife, to be lost amongst the countless dead claimed by the fall of Heaven.
Rising up above the conflagration, he looked down upon the apocalyptic sight in horror. His guise of humanity gone, the unnatural fire began its consumption of his divinity, his angelic flesh slowly eaten away, drifting ash adding to the blackness that now blotted out the sun.
And the angel Remiel began to scream.
Screaming for the loss of all he loved.
Screaming as the world below him died.
• • •
Remy opened his eyes and found himself looking up into the scarred visage of the Archangel Michael.
The archangel’s hand was locked tightly about Remy’s throat, and his skin was burning.
“There you are,” Michael hissed, his single eye bulging with twisted glee. “I didn’t think you were ever coming back to me.”
Remy squirmed in the angel’s grasp, but his hands were bound behind his back. “I like the new look, Michael,” he wheezed as the grip grew tighter and the flames danced upon his flesh. “It suits you.”
The archangel growled like an animal, hoisting Remy up from the ground and giving him a savage shake.
“You can’t even begin to imagine how hard it is for me to restrain myself,” Michael said. “To feel your neck snap beneath my fingers would be like a kiss from God.”
For a moment Remy believed that his neck would indeed break, the pressure on his throat causing the blood to pound in his ears, but just before the vertebrae were pulverized, the archangel threw his body to the ground.
“But I must remind myself,” Michael said, flexing his long, spidery fingers. “This isn’t all about me.”
Dots of color danced before Remy’s eyes and he coughed, the taste of pennies flooding his mouth. He managed to sit up, spitting out a wad of bloody phlegm to be absorbed by the ash collected on the ground.
Looking about his surroundings, he felt that sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. The Filthies stood around him, their bodies covered in horrible black scars, and as he looked upon each of them, he saw only madness in their expressions, the spark of the divine that should have been there long ago extinguished. These were merely shells of creatures once holy, seemingly unaware that what had made them what they were had died.
But across from him, bound as he was, were two familiar beings.
“Nice to see you’re still with us,” the Fossil said, lying on his side, his face a mass of blood.
One of the Filthies did not approve of the old man’s talking and jabbed the point of a filthy sword into his side. He cried out and then went limp, the pain driving him to unconsciousness.
Baarabus roared his displeasure, struggling against his bindings. “You fuckers are going to pay for that!” he bellowed.
The Filthies jumped upon him as well, jabbing at his muscular body with their spears and drawing blood.
“Enough!” Remy’s voice echoed throughout ruins.
The Filthies stopped their torture of the hellhound and stared at him with those awful eyes, most assuredly debating whether to attack him now.
“Ah, a voice of authority,” Michael said.
Remy looked toward the archangel, who was now sitting on a throne made from bones that appeared blackened by fire.
“What happened to you?” Remy found the words leaving his mouth before he could stop them.
Michael stiffened and then slid forward.
“What happened to me?” he repeated. “What happened?” The archangel looked about at the remains of Heaven, cobbled together to remind them of what had once been and what had been lost. “One would think you were new to the world, Remiel.”
Remy remained silent, staring defiantly at the creature that had once stood at the right hand of God.
“We were once a reflection of our God and the kingdom in which He lived,” Michael said. He stood, grimacing as if the movement caused him pain. “But that God is gone now,” he said, moving closer to Remy.
“And His kingdom?” The archangel lifted his arms, as if presenting the environment. “Take a good look, and I think you’ll understand.”
Remy did, and he was repulsed by what he saw. “It’s sad” was all he could manage.
Michael’s single wing unfurled with a whiplike snap. “Exactly!” The archangel bounded over to where Remy knelt upon the ground. “We are but shadows of our former glory.”
He walked past Remy toward the Filthies. “Look at you!” he screamed. “You should be ashamed!”
The Filthies cowered before the angel’s verbal assault.
Michael looked back to Remy. “But how else could they be, after surviving what they have?”
“This isn’t what God intended,” Remy said.
Michael turned his good eye upon the tribe.
“They’re monsters,” Remy told him.
Michael looked back, and Remy caught a spark in the archangel’s single, bloodshot orb.
“Would you expect anything less for what we have done?” Michael asked. “It’s well deserved. . . . It’s what we are supposed to be for now.”
“For now?”
“Don’t you know, Remiel?” Michael strode back toward him. “This is our punishment. . . . We are to live in this . . . this . . . wasteland until the Lord God sees fit to forgive us our sins and . . .”
“He’s dead, Michael,” Remy said flatly. “Murdered. There’s no one to forgive you except yourselves.”
The archangel smiled; where once there were teeth that glistened whitely like stars in the sky, there were now only jagged protrusions rotting in bloody gums.
“And that is where you’re wrong,” he said, shaking a finger at Remy. “He’s still here. . . . The Lord God is still here. . . .” The archangel looked about, his single eye widening. “And He’s watching!”
“You’re insane,” Remy said.
“He’s watching to see what we’ll do with this new and twisted world, filled with the damned . . . overrun with sinners.”
Remy struggled to stand, and the Filthies immediately bounded toward him, burned and blackened wings flapping pathetically.
“Hold!” Michael ordered, and they reluctantly backed away.
“Sinners?” Remy asked. “Who determined this? You?” He laughed. “There aren’t any sinners left in the world, Michael. Only survivors.”
Michael looked at him smugly and shook his scarred head. “You’re so blind, Remiel. Those taken when things went horribly awry—they were the blessed. Those who remain . . .”
“The sinners,” Remy finished, and Michael nodded. “You actually believe that, Michael?”
The archangel gradually straightened, the lone wing upon his back swishing back and forth like the tail of an agitated cat. “Why else would He have left us here? He needs to be sure we’re ready . . . ready to make the tough choices now that this world is winding down to its final days.”
“And once you’re done, and all the sinners are gone?” Remy asked. “What then? Do you think He’s coming back for you? To take you all to some new Paradise? . . . Is that what you think?”
“It’s what I know,” Michael said. “It’s what I see inside my head. It’s what keeps me from ending my own existence . . . from driving a sword up through my chin and into my skull. It is what keeps me, and in turn, my legions, sane.”
Remy looked to the Filthies again, remembering what they once had been. He shook his head sadly. “I hate to be the one to break it to you, Michael, but He’s gone.”
Michael’s deformed face became even more monstrous as Remy continued.
“This is it for us . . . for the world. We had our chance, and it ended badly. The Lord has been removed from the picture. . . . We’re lost now, cast adrift. It’s over, unless . . .”
Remy stopped, the pain inside his head suddenly excruciating. There was something in there—something trying to get out. Something from another’s memory that wanted to be recognized.
Michael was before him, the archangel’s hand once again wrapped around Remy’s throat.
“Unless what?” the angel demanded. “What do you know? Has He communicated with you? Has He shared something?”
“I have to go into the city . . . to what’s left of the Golden City,” Remy managed to get out.
Michael pushed him back to the ground, looking at him in utter amazement. “Why on earth would you need to do that?” He let go of Remy’s throat, backing quickly away as he considered Remy’s words.
“It’s something I need to do,” Remy gasped, catching his breath.
“Why?” Michael demanded. He held his hand out again and it began to spark, and then smolder, and then burn. “Did God tell you to go to the city?”
The picture of an elderly gentleman in a dark suit standing with a tidal wave frozen behind him suddenly flashed through Remy’s mind.
“I . . . I don’t know. . . . I just know what I have to do.”
“As do I,” Michael said. “For the true voice tells me so.”
The archangel turned and stomped to his throne of bones, and just as he reached it, just as he was about to sit down, he spoke.
“The Almighty has whispered to me His wants,” he proclaimed as the Filthies eagerly listened.
“Don’t do this, Michael. Listen to me for once,” Remy begged.
The archangel lowered himself to his throne with a grunt. “He wants you all taken to the pit.”
C
an you hear me?
Linda flinched at the sound of Assiel’s voice.
“Did you hear that?” Ashley asked.
Linda nodded. Marlowe’s tail was wagging and the dog was looking around for the source, showing her that he, too, had heard the healer’s voice.
“Is he here?” she wondered aloud, looking about the bizarre landscape that continued to shift and change as they stood beside the massive tree. One moment they were standing in the vastness of some great desert, the next in what looked to be a field of wheat, and then amongst rocks and ice.
I’m here,
Assiel confirmed for all to hear.
“What is this place?” Linda asked, growing dizzy from the swiftly changing environment.
You are at the center of Remy’s being,
the angel answered.
The place
where what you would call his soul dwells.
“Why does it keep changing?” Ashley asked.
It reacts to your thoughts, to your moods. It’s attempting to find something that your minds can fully comprehend—a common ground.
“How do we get it to stop changing?” Linda had to close her eyes as a wave of nausea threatened to overtake her.
Calm your minds,
Assiel instructed.
Focus on a place of pure tranquility.
“Where should it be?” Ashley asked. “I’m not sure if I’ve ever been to a place of pure tranquility.”
It doesn’t matter where it is, as long as it is a place where you were once safe and content.
Linda thought of the mountains of New Hampshire, the beaches of Cape Cod, and the rocky shores of Maine. All the places she had traveled to as a child. Places where she had felt secure and at peace.
“Cool,” she heard Ashley say, and she opened her eyes.
The world around them had calmed, transforming into something akin to a peaceful glade, with the sounds of birds chirping in the trees and the amazing smell of the woods after a summer rain.
“We did good,” Linda said, looking at Ashley, who nodded. “You, too,” she said, bending down to ruffle Marlowe’s black, velvet ears. The dog licked her face and wagged his thick, muscular tail.
“Now what, Assiel?” Linda asked.
“Bet it has something to do with this,” Ashley answered instead.
Linda turned to find Ashley staring at the large tree. The thick brown bark seemed to be flaking off, and a reddish liquid leaked from underneath to drip down the trunk, pooling at its base.
“It looks like it’s bleeding.” Ashley reached a tentative hand out, laying it flat against the bark—and suddenly stiffened, her eyes rolling back in her head.
“Ashley!” Linda cried as Marlowe barked frantically.
She grabbed Ashley’s hand, and pulled it away from the tree. Her palm was stained with the bloodred sap.
“Are you all right?” Linda asked.
For a moment, Ashley appeared confused, as if she wasn’t sure where she was, but then she seemed to remember. “Oh my God!” she exclaimed, pulling her hand from Linda’s grasp and staring at it.
“What is it?”
“This is him,” Ashley said, pointing to the tree. “This is Remy . . . or at least it’s part of him.”
“Assiel said that this is his soul.” Linda stepped closer to the tree and found herself raising a hand toward it.
“It’ll freak you out,” Ashley warned.
“Yeah, that’s okay.”
Linda swallowed as she laid her hands upon the rough bark. It was warm, as if flushed with the heat of blood. She felt the tree as it pulsed with life, but she also felt it weakening.
The tree was dying.
Remy’s soul was dying.
Linda suddenly felt herself falling backward and realized that Ashley and Marlowe had pulled her away, severing her connection to the weeping bark.
“Oh my God,” she whispered as she got her bearings back.
“I know,” Ashley agreed.
They all gazed at the tree now as it continued to weep the thick, bloodlike substance, saturating the ground beneath.
“I don’t think we have much time,” Linda said.
You are correct,
Assiel responded from the ether
.
“So how do we fix this?” Ashley asked. “How do we stop him from dying?”
You must add your strengths . . . your life essences to his.
“Will that be enough?” Linda questioned.
It will sustain him.
“But for how long? That doesn’t solve the problem of where his life energies are going.”
No, it doesn’t.
“So we’re just keeping him alive with our strength until . . .”
The angel remained quiet.
“Until we run out, too, and then I’m guessing we all die,” Ashley finished Linda’s sentence. “I’m not sure how I feel about that.”
Linda turned back to the tree, watching it continue to bleed. “I know how I feel. I feel like we can do more.”
“Like what?” Ashley wanted to know. Both she and Marlowe fixed Linda in their gazes.
“Where is his energy . . . his soul, going?” Linda asked, then pointed to the darkly stained earth and answered her own question. “It’s going into there.”
Marlowe immediately jumped into action, bending forward and digging furiously with his front paws.
“Hey!” Ashley warned. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”
Linda watched the dog and the hole that had started to form, and felt compelled to move closer. She found herself dropping to her knees beside the Labrador, and began to dig at the moist earth with both hands.
“Okay,” Ashley said slowly; then she joined Linda and Marlowe, and she, too, began to dig.
They dug deeper and deeper, exposing the lower regions of the tree. Linda was the first to notice something odd.
“Wait,” she said, and Ashley immediately stopped. Marlowe was lost in the moment, continuing to paw and dig.
“Marlowe, stop,” Linda ordered, and the dog did, panting tiredly.
“What is it?” Ashley asked, crawling closer to the edge of the hole they’d excavated.
“Careful.” Linda held out a hand to keep the young woman from getting too close. Then she squinted into the darkness of the hole. She could see the tree’s roots as they intertwined about one another, extending downward into . . .
It should have been earth, but instead there was nothing but darkness.
Linda watched the sap flow down the trunk of the tree, onto the thick roots, then drip off into—nothing.
“There’s nothing there,” Linda said, leaning forward, reaching her hand down into the blackness of the void. The loose earth beneath her knees gave way, and she was suddenly falling forward into the hole. She felt herself begin to panic, fingers scrabbling for a hold on the roots.
But her momentum was stopped as Marlowe grabbed a mouthful of the back of her blouse. And then Ashley was there to help pull Linda back to solid ground.
“Are you all right?” the girl asked, fear in her tone.
“I’m fine. Thanks for the hand.” Linda petted Marlowe’s head and gave him a quick kiss before turning her attentions back to the hole they’d dug. She smiled slightly. “There’s something down there in the darkness.”
“And that’s where Remy is.”
• • •
The Harvester was proud of his job, but he wished he were killing.
That was what the Bone Masters were born to do—to kill—to be the best assassins in existence.
Unless born a Harvester.
He scowled as he gathered up his tools, tools that had been used by his father and his father’s father.
It had been his lot in life to have been born into a Harvester family, and once a Harvester, always a Harvester. There was no point in railing against it.
Harvesters selected the eggs from the many nests that littered the pocket dimension, searching out the healthiest, returning them to the home world, where they would be matched with a novice Bone Master. It was an important job, and that was what the young Harvester kept telling himself, even as he imagined bonding with one of the hatchlings and eventually starting a career as an assassin for the Bone Master guild.
With a heavy sigh, he placed his special tools in the egg basket, ready to embark on his journey to the pocket dimension that had always existed alongside the Bone Master home world. It was only accessible once every five cycles, when the barrier between the worlds was thinnest.
Today would be that day.
The Harvester picked up his basket and left his dwelling. He stood outside, in the early hours of the day, and closed his eyes, listening for the familiar sound. It was a sound he’d heard in his mind since coming of age, a sound that only a Harvester could hear, the sound of a passage opening to the pocket dimension. It was high-pitched, painful in many respects. It took him a moment to focus, but there it was, off in the distance . . . not too far . . . closer than it had been in previous cycles.
He found the passage in a swampy area used to dispatch the weak and infirm of the Bone Master clan. He could see it as nobody else could: a gossamer sheet of reality that separated his world from the world of harvesting.
He approached the veil and set his basket down, removing an ancient tool used by his family for countless generations. It was told that the hooked knife had been fashioned from the fang of the first of the special animals to cross from the pocket universe. He wasn’t sure whether that was true, but he did know that the blade performed a very specific function.
A job that only it could do, very much like himself.
Standing before the weakness between worlds, he raised the knife and cut into the area where the barrier was thinnest, slicing an opening from his world to the other. A blast of stinking air escaped from the tear, but he was used to the thick, acrid smell, for he’d been smelling it all of his life. The stink had clung to the clothes and skin of his father and grandfather, and he was aware that he stank of it as well.
The Harvester stepped through the passage and into a strange world of perpetual shadow. Plumes of thick green gas erupted from jagged cracks in the skin of the world. Two moons hung in the black sky, both full, like the blind eyes of some enormous god, another sign that it was time for harvest.
Walking across the dry and barren landscape, the Harvester carefully avoided the open earth and the corrosive gas that escaped from it, pulling the collar of his tunic up over his mouth and nostrils to filter the air. He remembered where he had seen nests on his previous visits, filled with eggs not then ready to be taken, but now . . .
From the corner of his eye, he caught movement and spun around.
A pregnant layer, its hairless flesh prickled with quivering bumps, pressed itself against an outcropping of rock and hissed at him. The beasts were ferocious in nature, and even more so when carrying eggs. The Harvester stepped back respectfully, communicating with his eyes that he meant the animal no harm, encouraging it to go its way and allow him to go his.
The beast turned its swollen body and lumbered off toward another formation of rocks in the distance.
Next cycle, I’ll take its eggs back with me,
he thought as he watched it disappear into the shadows thrown by the rocks.
A mountain of rock rose up from the scarred surface in the distance, and he made his way toward it. That promising nest had been located just inside a cave, and . . .
Something else caught the Harvester’s attention, and he slowed just a little bit as he grew closer to the cave.
Eggs . . . There were eggs scattered on the ground, their thick leathery skin torn, leaking fluids into the thirsty dryness of the ground.
How can this be?
he wondered, starting to run now. The beasts of this world had no natural predators; in fact, everything here seemed to exist only to allow these creatures to flourish. Even the toxic gas that escaped from the planet’s bowels was loaded with minerals that acted as nutrients for the gestating eggs.
What could have done this horrible thing?
The Harvester stopped before the first of the ruptured egg sacs. The pale, spindly animal that had once been inside it lay not far away. But as the Harvester grew closer to the corpse, he took notice of something even more disturbing—the creature’s head appeared to have been twisted completely around on its neck.
“I’m surprised at how fragile these things are,” said a voice, so loud in the silence of the world that the Harvester cried out, dropping his basket.
He looked up to see a human—at least he appeared to be so—step from the cave and approach him holding another of the eggs.
“I would have thought that something that was to become a demon assassin’s ultimate weapon would be a little more”—the man then threw the egg sac to the ground, where it burst open, its liquid contents spraying across the dirt—“durable.”
The Harvester gasped, making a move toward the ruptured egg, and the important life that had started to painfully emerge from within.
“Leave it,” the man warned, and there was a menace in his voice that froze the Harvester in place.
The animal had partially emerged from within its broken egg sac, struggling to free itself as it opened its mouth and wailed—a wail that was cut violently short as the man crushed the animal’s skull beneath the heel of his shoe.
The Harvester screamed at the horrific sight. It was his purpose to harvest and protect the young life-forms. To see them so cruelly slain caused something inside him to snap.
A killer’s nature to emerge.
The Harvester dove for his basket, reaching for the hooked blade. He grabbed it and lunged at the man, aiming for his pale throat.
But the man moved with incredible speed, capturing the Harvester’s wrist and twisting so violently that the bones snapped with a sound like the crack of whip. The Harvester cried out in agony, dropping his sacred weapon as he fell to knees. He cradled his broken wrist and glared up at his attacker.
“I have no idea who you are or why you are here, but—,” the Harvester began.
“So glad you’ve asked,” the man interrupted, stepping ominously closer. “I need to get to the Bone Master home world, and I’d like you to take me.” He smiled then, a predator’s smile.