The thick tendrils of green dragged the archangel to his knees, and he was about to call upon the fire of God that resided within him, when something stopped him cold. Two figures were walking toward him—
no,
they were being carried on a thick wave of rustling vegetation. The surge of what looked like ivy stopped directly in front of the archangel.
“Sorry about that,” the male figure said. He was thin, his clothes filthy. There appeared to be vines covering his body, some having burrowed beneath his flesh like veins. “Sometimes the place gets ahead of us.”
The female figure laughed. She appeared to be as thin and dirty as the man. Her skin was a duskier hue, but she, too, was covered in vines. “The place gots a mind of its own,” she said. “It ain’t gonna do shit unless it wants to.”
“Too true,” the man said. He raised a closed fist and slowly opened his fingers.
Immediately the vines released Michael. He summoned a sword of fire and raised it toward the pair. “Release my soldiers,” he commanded, barely able to hold back his righteous anger.
“Oh yeah, sure,” the woman said. She, too, raised her fist, then slowly opened her fingers, and the soldiers were free.
“I should cut you two down and reduce this corrupted place to ash,” Michael sneered.
“I don’t think that’s why the Lord God sent you here, do you?” the woman asked. “Though sometimes, I don’t think He can keep track of all the plates He’s got spinnin’.”
“Please, let us explain,” the man offered.
Michael glared at them for a moment, then slowly let his sword drop. “Then do so quickly, before my patience runs out.”
“I’m Jon, and this is—”
“Izzy,” the woman interrupted.
“We are the Gardeners,” Jon finished. “The last of the original bloodline.”
“Adam and Eve,” Izzy explained. “The first man and woman.”
“I know who they were,” Michael snapped.
“We had to stop you from getting any farther,” Izzy continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “We couldn’t risk you waking them up.”
Michael cocked his head. “Waking up who?”
Jon and Izzy shared a furtive glance before looking back to Michael.
“What do you know about the Shaitan?” Jon asked.
• • •
Methuselah led Remy back to the kitchen.
The angel could see that it hadn’t been used in quite some time, a similar layer of dust and grease coating all the metal surfaces.
“First you give me drinks and now a meal?”
Methuselah stopped, grunted, and then proceeded to the back of the kitchen, where he stopped in front of the large metal walk-in freezer.
Remy heard a noise behind him and turned to see Gerta standing there.
“Are you going to visit your friends?” she asked in a little-girl voice that immediately made him want to protect her.
Remy looked back to Methuselah, who had his hand upon the handle of the freezer, ready to open it. “Am I?” he asked, suddenly feeling anxious.
“Yeah.” The golem pulled open the thick, insulated door. “Yeah, you are.”
Clouds of chilling mist wafted out, enticing Remy to come closer, but he didn’t want to move. Then he felt the small warm hand touch his.
“C’mon,” Gerta said. “I’ll take you.”
Together, the two walked across the kitchen. Methuselah stepped back, crossing his arms over his massive stone chest and bowing his head.
Gerta released Remy’s hand and placed hers at the small of his back, gently urging him inside the freezer. “Go on. I’ll be right here.”
Remy steeled himself and stepped into the freezing-cold place. A layer of icy fog drifted over the floor, but he could see the covered shapes lying there. His heart lurched as he gazed at them. He turned to see that Gerta was standing just inside the freezer, the looming form of Methuselah behind her in the doorway.
“Go on and say hi,” the little girl urged him, her kindhearted smile giving him the strength to go forward.
Remy slowly lowered himself to the floor. He did not feel the cold radiating from the tile beneath his knees as he reached out with a trembling hand to the top of the sheet beside him.
The covering was cold beneath his fingers and crackled nearly deafeningly in the silence of the freezer. He drew the sheet down and felt a shudder of shock and surprise as he looked upon the still, pale face of Steven Mulvehill.
“Oh” was all he could say. Then he gently touched the man’s face, the skin cold and hard beneath the warmth of his fingertips. “Look at you,” Remy whispered. “I’m sure you’d give me a raft of shit for making you lie here so long, and I’m truly sorry for that.”
There were flashes of memory that were not his, of Remy and the demon hound Baarabus digging through the rubble of a collapsed building to find his friend.
“I’m also sorry that I wasn’t there to help you.”
He sensed Gerta and looked to see her kneeling beside him.
“He was your friend, wasn’t he?” she asked.
“Yeah, he was.”
“I bet he was a really good friend, too.”
“He was.”
She looked at him, all wide-eyed and innocent. “He’ll always be your friend, as long as you remember him.”
“I could never forget him,” Remy said.
Gerta gently pulled the sheet back over Steven’s face. There was something awfully sad about that, but then everything about this moment was drenched in sorrow.
Then she reached over to pull the sheet down from the shrouded body beside Mulvehill. Remy’s hand shot out, grabbing hold of the child’s wrist, stopping her.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“I . . . I don’t know who . . .”
“You won’t until you look.”
She pulled the sheet down, and Remy’s heart broke all over again.
“She’s pretty,” Gerta said.
“Yes,” Remy said, gazing with tear-filled eyes at Ashley. There was heavy frost on one of her eyebrows, and Remy wiped it away, knowing that she would have hated to have something like that there.
“She was your friend, too?” Gerta asked.
“She was more than that,” Remy said, unable to take his eyes from the young woman he’d watched grow up on Beacon Hill. “When I was with her, I could imagine what it was like to have a daughter.”
Baarabus had been the one to find her, and had lain down beside her corpse, not letting the angel near her. It had been quite some time before the dog had finally allowed Remy to retrieve her body.
The little girl looked off in another direction, toward a wheeled cart in the corner that normally would have held food.
“She loves you very much,” Gerta told him.
“I hope that she did,” Remy answered her.
Gerta touched his arm, making him look at her.
“She
does
,” the child stressed the last word, insinuating that somehow Ashley might still . . .
Gerta reached across him to cover Ashley’s face.
“You still have a lot to do,” the child said. She took his arm, trying to pull him to his feet.
There were still two more shapes beneath sheets, and he had a feeling deep in his gut that he knew who they were.
“I have to finish,” he told the child, who still held his arm.
She stared with intensity, wanting to spare him the sadness to come.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” he reassured her.
He knew that this would be the hardest for him, but if he didn’t do it, the journey he was currently on would never be complete.
Gerta let go of his arm but still stood by him. “I’ll stand here, just in case you need me.”
He managed a smile—it wasn’t much, but it was all he could muster—as he turned his attention to the larger of the remaining sheet-covered forms. It felt like it took forever for him to reach down and pull the sheet away from the battered face of his wife.
Madeline.
Remy experienced a powerful jolt again as two conflicting memories struggled for supremacy. He saw his beautiful wife in life, but also in death.
But it wasn’t this death he saw. No, he saw her death in a Boston nursing home, taken by cancer after a valiant fight for her life.
Two memories, two deaths—one just as painful as the other.
Remy felt his strength begin to wane, but before he lost it completely, he reached for the final sheet and revealed the corpse of Marlowe.
This was it for him, the physical representation of his humanity laid out on the cold tile floor of a walk-in freezer.
Now he knew why the Remy he had replaced had been so cruel. His humanity had been crushed. There was no longer a place for kindness, love, and warmth.
No place for the weakness of humanity.
Remy knelt amongst the dead—
his
dead—and pondered the question of what to do next. He waited for something, perhaps the incredible pain as the humanity inside this version of himself, the humanity that he still felt crying out in sadness, withered and died, leaving only the emotionless messenger behind.
“Are you through?” the little girl asked.
He was. He covered his wife’s face for what he knew to be the last time, and covered his dog, expecting to feel it all come crashing down, transforming him into the cruel being that he had replaced.
But it didn’t happen. For something still burned inside him. Surrounded by darkness, a tiny flame still flickered. He didn’t know what it was—maybe hope?
But it was enough.
L
inda was lost in a sea of darkness.
It threatened to swallow her whole, to snuff out her light and make her a part of its infinite black, but she fought to remain.
A sudden gust of turbulence had spun her in such a way that the chain around her waist had unwrapped, allowing the currents of shadow to take her. The darkness wanted her to become part of its whole and pulled her deeper into its all-encompassing embrace.
What hope did she have?
That was all she had, she realized, and allowed herself to move with the currents.
Allowing herself to be carried . . .
To where? Where would she end up?
Having no sense of up or down, she was dragged along, never losing sight of the reason she was there, of the man that she loved with all her heart and soul.
Remy.
She would not allow the darkness to claim her; she would continue to be the light in this vast, black ocean. He needed her, for without her efforts, without the efforts of Ashley and Marlowe, he would be lost. The darkness would take him for its own.
And she would do everything—
anything
—to have her Remy back.
• • •
Ashley paced in front of the hole.
Her mind was racing.
What should I do? I have to do something. What if she’s hurt down there and I’m up here and . . .
She dropped to her knees at the edge again, leaning as far forward as she dared. “Linda! Can you hear me? Make a noise . . . any noise that you can!”
But there was nothing from the darkness below, not even an echo.
Ashley grabbed the chain. She had to go down there. What choice did she have?
Marlowe stood nearby, watching her nervously.
“I’ve got to do this, pal,” she told him, as much to convince herself as him. “She’s down there someplace.”
The dog continued to eye her, following her every movement.
“But what about you?” she asked with uncertainty. “If I go down there and something happens to me . . .”
Ashley was torn, but she had to do something. Grabbing up the chain, she moved toward the tree and was stopped cold by what she saw.
The tree . . . There was something wrong with it.
She could see that the bark was darkening, sloughing off. More of the dark, bloodlike liquid was draining from the new bare spots.
The tree was dying.
Marlowe was beside her now, and he had started to whine.
“I know, boy,” she said. “Something’s wrong. . . . Something’s really, really wrong.”
She dropped the chain and stepped closer to the tree. The bark was making a strange crackling sound as it seemed to wither before her eyes, then fall to the ground. The skin beneath the bark was pale and dry.
Sick.
As more of the tree’s underskin became exposed, she felt it: a strange pull upon her, something compelling her to lay her hands upon it. She was leery, remembering what had happened earlier when she and Linda had laid hands on the tree.
But maybe that was what was supposed to happen. Maybe the tree, which was representative of Remy’s soul, needed her to touch it. Maybe she was what was needed to help keep Remy’s soul from being drained away.
She feared for Linda but also knew that something had to be done to help the tree. She turned her head to look at the hole they had dug, sending a silent apology into the darkness, for she knew what she had to do.
Marlowe had also sidled closer to the tree, and Ashley was about to warn him away when she realized what he was doing.
The dog laid down at the base of the tree, pressing his hip against an exposed area of the tree’s underskin. He sighed with the contact, lowering his face between his paws and closing his eyes.
“You’re such a good boy,” Ashley praised, and then she, too, reached out.
To keep the tree, and Remy’s soul, alive.
• • •
Assiel felt his own energies on the wane, but he knew that he must continue to hold on to Ashley, Linda, and Marlowe, or they might very well share Remy’s fate.
Part of him was attempting to keep the spiritual aspects of the three connected to the realm in which Remy’s soul existed, while the other part of him struggled to keep their soul essences anchored to the physical world, where their bodies waited for them.
He knew they were having difficulty, and he wished that he could do more to assist them, but it was taking all of his strength and concentration to maintain the balance and keep his hold on the two worlds. He had already carefully reached out, compelling Ashley and the canine to join their soul energies to the tree, for without their assistance, Remy’s own essence would have withered away.
Assiel was holding his own, his focus intense, when he heard the sounds: explosions of violence that drew him back to the physical world.
The house was under attack.
• • •
Squire was pissed off. The Bone Master fuckers had stolen his shtick. They were using shadows as their means of travel, just like he did, and he didn’t care for that one little bit.
And there were lots of shadows in Remy’s kitchen, the only light in the center of the ceiling throwing just enough illumination to create some pretty nifty passages.
“Light,” Squire barked to Mulvehill, as they moved toward the kitchen table, where the weapons retrieved from Francis’ apartment were waiting.
“What?” Mulvehill asked, continuing to fire his gun into the shadows.
“Light,” Squire repeated. He was shoving weapons and ammunition into his pockets. “We need more light! It’ll cut down on the shadows, make it harder for them to move around.”
The homicide cop darted across the kitchen as bone bullets spat out from pockets of shadow around the room. He raced by the stove, pushing a button on the hood to illuminate more of the kitchen.
There were screams from some of the shadows.
“Take that, you fucking bastards,” Squire growled, firing three shots from an automatic pistol into the dwindling patch of shadow.
“That seemed to help a little,” Mulvehill commented as he moved alongside Squire. They flipped over the kitchen table to use as a shield.
“Yeah, some,” Squire said, still not pleased with the situation.
They kept their heads low as bone projectiles hit the wood.
Squire carefully peeked over the edge of the table. A Bone Master was squeezing through one of the shadows, and the hobgoblin fired a shot directly into the assassin’s face. The killer dropped to the floor, half his body still inside the passage. “That should keep that opening clogged for a bit.”
“Not long enough.” Mulvehill was peering around the side of the table as he slipped another clip into his gun. Squire looked as well and saw that the dead assassin was being dragged back into the shadows.
Bone projectiles were flying again, striking the tabletop.
“We’re not gonna hold this kitchen for much longer,” Squire said, firing at movement from another area of shadow.
“Why do you say that?” Mulvehill asked. “We’ve got guns and plenty of ammunition.”
“Yeah, but these guys ain’t your typical thugs.”
There was shot from a shadow, and the light above the stove went dark.
Mulvehill looked at Squire.
“Shit,” Squire said.
There came another shot, and this time the glass casing over the ceiling light shattered, exposing the four bulbs.
“Shit, shit, shit!” Squire began gathering up the weapons and ammunition that he’d placed at his feet, shoving them in the heavy duffel bag they’d brought with them from Francis’ building.
Mulvehill was desperately firing into the shadows, but two of the four lightbulbs exploded.
Squire slapped his arm as he jumped to his feet. “We’ve got to go!”
Mulvehill emptied his clip just as the last two bulbs were extinguished, plunging the kitchen into darkness.
“Move!” Squire shouted, grabbing Mulvehill’s arm.
And the two raced into the living room as Bone Master assassins swarmed behind them.