“You rest now,” he told her, and leaned in to kiss her forehead. “I’ll take things from here.”
She closed her eyes and Remy left her beneath the tree. He stopped and bent down to pick up the Godkiller from the ground, feeling a thrum of power vibrate through his arm, telling him that it was ready.
“All right, then,” he said aloud, and stepped into the jungle in search of his destiny.
• • •
Linda stood at the edge of the roaring surf. She could have sworn there had been an old man standing with the woman, but now she seemed to be alone, smiling sadly and hugging herself against the harsh wind blowing in from the sea.
She approached the woman and stood beside her. “You’re his wife,” Linda said. “You’re Madeline.”
“I’m an echo of something very important to him,” the woman said, her eyes never leaving the approaching storm on the horizon.
“Do you know where he is?” Linda asked.
“Out there.” Madeline nodded toward the ocean. “At the center of the storm.”
Linda looked as well, white flashes of lightning temporarily leaving the memory of jagged bolts on the surface of her eyes.
“I need to get to him,” she said. “I need to bring him back.”
Madeline looked away from the storm and at Linda.
“Can you help me?” Linda asked, desperation in her voice. “Please.”
Remy’s wife stared at her intensely, and then her features softened, and she smiled as her image began to fade.
“No!” Linda cried, reaching to grab hold of the woman, as if she could somehow make the phantasm stay.
But she was gone, leaving Linda alone.
“Please,” Linda wailed over the moans of the wind. “I need help . . . please!”
The storm seemed to be growing larger, rolling across the sky toward land, bolts of lightning and crashes of thunder causing the very air to tremble. Linda looked into the swiftly moving clouds and searched for the center, where her lover’s dead wife had told her he would be.
“Remy,” she whispered, suddenly exhausted beyond words and falling to her knees.
“Come back to me.”
R
emy knew that he was getting close.
Jagged pieces of stone hovered in the air before him, defying the gravity of the world.
Pieces of Heaven—of the Golden City—as solid as the faith of a true believer but lighter than the air itself. He reached out to one of the stones as it spun gracefully in the air before him, and flicked it away, watching as it rolled through the humid jungle air, colliding with another, larger piece of rock that drifted through a curtain of leafy vines.
He wondered what awaited him beyond the veil of vegetation as he moved toward it and pushed the tendrils aside. It was like an asteroid field, the air filled with stones of steadily increasing size. Remy advanced, moving the stones, disrupting their gentle orbit, creating a chain reaction of weightless rubble careening by his face.
A wall of much larger pieces of yellow stone hung before him, rubbing together as they floated, making Remy think of an enormous set of teeth, grinding nervously. He stood before the wall, steeling himself for what he would find on its other side. Then, with a deep breath, he reached out and pushed at the center of the weightless rubble. The obstruction broke apart, the pieces spinning off in opposite directions.
And what he saw filled him with an odd combination of awe and incredible sadness.
The process of Unification frozen before him.
Remy’s heart skipped a beat as his eyes fell upon the Kingdom of Heaven—the Golden City—at the center of it all.
Frozen in the midst of becoming something else.
Unified.
It was like looking at a single frame of a film, a power act, frozen as it occurred. Remy carefully moved through the scene, using the floating stones as steps.
And the closer he got to the city, the more carnage he observed. Bodies of angels clogged the air; all of the Heavenly hosts were represented there, frozen as they were when the horror had occurred.
He stood upon a drifting platform of rock and took it all in, the lush Garden of Eden flowing in to rejoin the mass of Heaven and the City of Gold, towering spires of reflective black stone—the structures of Hell—reaching out fingerlike to take hold of the truce that was being offered, to step from the shadows into the light and be one.
His mind became engorged with the imagery, powerful memories that hadn’t been there moments before.
It was the Shaitan who had been the heralds of disaster.
Remy opened his eyes to the reality before him, seeing some of the pale-skinned abominations frozen in the midst of attack as they swarmed from the Garden, their actions stopped by an act far more horrible.
The shame he felt was crushing as he leapt from one floating piece of rock to another.
He remembered the screams, the cries of shock at the audacity of it all.
And as the gathered masses had screamed, he’d acted.
The memories were far clearer—sharper now. As the Shaitan had swarmed, and the Heavenly hosts were distracted, Remy had reached into a pocket for something that was waiting there, something that pulsed with the power of potential, something that could either create or destroy.
In his mind he saw it, and as he looked upon it, he knew its purpose.
To murder.
Remy remembered the feeling of the bullet in his hand, the warmth of the metal casing. The recollection terrified him, but for the life of him, he still could not understand why he had even considered performing the act that brought about the dusk of humanity, and the fall of the Kingdom of . . .
A vision, razor-sharp, sliced its way into his tumultuous remembrances.
He
was there, the stranger with the pale skin and oily black hair. And he was smiling as he gifted Remy the bullet.
Remy swayed upon the floating platform of rock, reeling as if the memories were a physical assault upon him. Who was this mysterious man who hid beneath the folds of his memories?
Pulling himself together, Remy looked across a broad expanse of space to the broken stairs that would take him up to the front of the Golden City, where God had been when he’d . . .
Behind the lids of his eyes, he saw himself tear the Pitiless pistol from Francis’ grasp, the look of utter shock upon the fallen Guardian angel’s face as Remy fired the gun into him. Remy’s fingers tingled and then burned as they remembered opening the gun’s chamber and placing the special bullet inside.
Remy leapt from the platform of stone, landing on the shattered stairs. He followed them with his eyes as they ascended into the hall of Heaven, from where the Creator had once surveyed His kingdom.
Slowly, he climbed those stairs, dreading what he would find at the top.
And with each footfall, images exploded inside his mind, forcing him to recall what this other version of himself had done.
He heard the chamber of the Pitiless pistol snap shut with a click so sharp it could be heard over the screams and cries of the Shaitan attack.
And then he climbed these very same steps, raising the weapon, taking aim, and . . .
Remy reached the top of the stairs and gazed upon a sight that froze him in place like those caught in the release of power when the Lord God was felled by an assassin’s bullet.
It was a sight that defined it all, the physical representation of what this most holy process—this Unification—was all about. The Almighty, resplendent in robes of purest light, His holy visage appearing as the old man Remy had seen in his dreams, speaking of a coming conflict. He stared at Him as He floated in the air above the floor, petrified in the moment of His demise, and briefly wondered if God appeared this way to everyone, or if the image of the Creator differed for any and all who looked upon Him.
And flying to His aid on wings as black as night was Lucifer Morningstar, the look frozen upon his flawless features reflective of the utter horror of being on the cusp of forgiveness and having that blessing savagely ripped away.
Remy approached the scene and felt a kind of resistance in the ether around him, almost as if the surroundings somehow knew that he was the one.
That he was responsible, and sought to push him away.
Then he heard the gunshot, a sound so loud that it swallowed all other sounds, a sound that demanded one’s attention, a sound that said,
Listen to me, for this is the end of it all
.
And that sound finally stole away his strength. Remy dropped to his knees before the moment frozen in infamy.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, his eyes welling with scalding tears. He pulled the Godkiller from where he’d tucked it into the waist of his pants at the small of his back. “But I’m here now. . . . I’ve traveled so very far to make things right. . . . You just have to let me know . . . what I need to do to fix this. . . . Please . . .”
And then there came a voice.
“Do you think they can hear you? . . . That
He
can hear you? Oh, I certainly do hope so.”
Remy turned his head to see a man—
the man
from his visions . . . from the memories that cascaded into his skull. He stood upon a piece of floating stone, a once fine suit dust-covered and torn, his skin deathly pale, and his hair as black as the night.
“Who?” Remy began, but . . .
The man raised a finger to his lips. “Silence,” he commanded, and the angel was compelled to be so. “I’ll be doing the talking.”
Remy noticed a ring upon the man’s finger that seemed to pulse with an ungodly power.
“You want to start with
who
, but really, it should be
why
,” the man said, stepping onto another floating stone, closer to Remy.
Remy wanted to speak, to demand answers from the mysterious figure, but found himself unable to.
“Why would anyone want to ruin something as potentially magnificent as this?” The man spread his arms, taking in the whole incredible, petrified moment. “It’s quite simple, really.”
The man stood before Remy now, but his focus was on God.
“He took something unbelievably special from me, and so I took from Him.” He looked back to Remy. “See? Simple.”
Remy wanted to speak, but the words would not come—were not allowed to come.
The man studied him, seeing how Remy strained against his commands.
“Go ahead,” he said finally, giving the ring on the finger of his right hand a twist. “You may speak.”
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.