It had been like that since . . .
Since Remy had done the unthinkable.
He saw it again inside his head. God was going to make it all right; God was going to forgive them all their trespasses. He was going to make Heaven whole again. . . . He was going to make him, Francis—
Fraciel
—whole again.
Francis couldn’t have imagined anything more wonderful. He hadn’t been the greatest of angels, nor the worst, in all seriousness, but he knew that he had done wrong and understood that he must pay for his sins.
And pay he had, over and over again, but when the Morningstar returned, and Hell began to change under Lucifer’s restored might, Francis had been abandoned, left to sink or swim in the shifting landscape of Hell.
He thought he was going to die then and had pretty much accepted his fate—
Que sera, sera
, as Doris Day once sang. It was okay.
But then he’d been saved by the very one who had betrayed the Lord God and who had originally led Fraciel down the path to banishment.
Lucifer Morningstar had saved his life, and for that Francis had no choice but to serve him. And serve him he had, all the while hoping and believing that it might lead to something—
Eventful.
And it had at that—the Lord God saying to the one who was once His favorite,
You shall be forgiven and your kingdom will be joined to mine
.
And here was the kicker . . . the most glorious of kickers: The Creator had also planned to forgive all who had once fought with the Son of the Morning.
All would be forgiven and things would return to the way they used to—
were supposed to
—be.
The Almighty called it Unification, and Francis said,
I’m there.
And he was, as were all the angels of Heaven as well as all those who wished to be absolved of their sins. It was the most monumental of occasions, and Francis remembered what it was like to truly be a part of something far larger than he.
But as the Kingdom of Heaven was about to be restored, and all those who had fallen so far from the path were to be forgiven, something happened. Something that put acid in his brain, then added glass and, for good measure, a heaping portion of spiders. And that was all before the explosions began.
Remy . . . his dearest friend in all the world . . . Remy had done the unthinkable. It still didn’t seem true, but it was—the spiders told him so.
When all was about to become right again, Remy had taken Francis’ weapon, the gun given to him by Lucifer Morningstar, and had used it on him—shooting him square in the chest and nearly ending his existence. Francis liked to think that Remy had shot him that way on purpose, not wanting to harm his closest of friends.
But it was what the Seraphim had done next that caused the acid to bubble and the spiders to scream.
Remy had used the Pitiless to murder God.
And that was that.
There were no two ways about it.
Simeon was right; Francis had no choice.
He had to kill Remy.
It was only fair.
They bounced onto a floating piece of the Golden City, rolling across its cracked and brittle surface before tumbling over the side and crashing to the ground below.
All the while Francis was screaming, a mournful wail that filled Remy with great sadness.
“Why did you do it? Why? Why? Why?”
Remy wanted to answer, tried to answer, but the blows raining down upon his head made it difficult to respond intelligibly. Instead, he planted a foot against his friend’s stomach and kicked, hurling the former Guardian angel away.
“Francis, you have to listen to me,” Remy said, jumping to his feet, preparing for what was to come next.
“No, I don’t,” Francis said, looking around the rubble-strewn ground and finding something that brought a twisted smile to his face. A sword.
The blade was black and tarnished as if left in a fire too long, but Francis raised it high above his head as he leapt toward his nemesis. Remy grabbed a piece of stone that was floating by and used it as a shield to meet the sword’s descent. It shattered the stone but gave Remy enough time to leap out of the way before it could cleave his skull in two.
“Always thought you were the good one,” Francis continued to shriek, swinging the blade again. “The one we could all aspire to be like!”
The blade whispered as it passed over Remy’s head, setting Francis off balance and giving Remy an opportunity to smash a jagged rock into the side of the fallen angel’s head.
“Please, listen,” Remy begged as his friend dropped to his knees with the blow. “You have to trust me! I wasn’t in control! Please! It’s so fucking complicated!”
Francis quickly recovered, tackling Remy and bringing him down in a heap beneath him. “It doesn’t change the fact that it was you who took it all away!”
He wrapped his hands around Remy’s throat, pulling him up and then slamming him down, again and again. Remy tried to break the grip, but the fingers locked on his flesh dug in so deep they were like a part of him.
“You killed them all!” Francis wailed. “You murdered everyone . . . everything!”
Remy tried to tap into the fire that raged deep inside him, but he couldn’t, for the savagery of Francis’ attack was relentless.
And the sweet, sweet voice of oblivion called to him from not so far away. Remy considered the offer of her embrace, her promise to take him away from all the pain that he had caused.
All he had do was take her hand.
• • •
Simeon hadn’t been that amused in ages.
From atop the stairs leading into the Golden City, he watched the two angels fight.
“That’s it, Francis,” he encouraged. “Show the murderer how much pain he’s caused.”
Simeon had always suspected that Remy Chandler would find his way back here, to the scene of the crime, so to speak. There was a part of him that wondered why he hadn’t just ordered the Seraphim to slay himself. He really didn’t have an answer, but the additional amusement did bring him some joy.
Francis continued to pummel his friend, the fight really seeming to be one-sided. It wouldn’t be long, Simeon guessed, before the former Guardian angel slew his friend.
Finally tired of the fight below, he turned back to the petrified visages of Lucifer and God.
“I see what You did,” he said, directing his words to God. “Somehow You managed to reach out to Your warrior angel and call him here.” Simeon strolled closer, his eyes never leaving the one he hated most of all. “I’m not sure if that’s even possible, but it makes a good story, doesn’t it? The last vestige of the Lord God Almighty calling upon the one who struck Him down. Calling upon him to somehow right the wrong, to pull victory from the fire.”
Simeon laughed. “There will be no victory from this fire,” the forever man said with an enthusiastic shake of his head. “Your attacker . . . your pathetic pawn . . . will meet his fate at the hands of his friend, and things will return to the new normal.
“You know the new normal, don’t you?” Simeon smiled. “It’s what I’ve put into place . . . as Your reality slowly fades away and dies.”
The forever man stopped, digging his hands into his pockets as he considered his next bit of musing.
“I wonder,” he said. “When it’s all gone . . . when it all winds down, will You cease to be? Will it all blink out like someone turning the lights off? Will I cease to be, for that matter?” He couldn’t help but smile again. “I’m excited to see what happens.”
He’d started to pace again, when his foot struck against something that skittered across the rubble-strewn ground, glittering seductively.
“What do we have here?” Simeon asked, bending down to pick up the weapon that Remy had dropped. “Ah, would you look at this—the murder weapon, so to speak.”
He chuckled, presenting the gun to God and Lucifer.
“Your lackey brought this,” Simeon said to Him. “And why is that? Was this supposed to help You? Was he supposed to finish what he started?”
“You mean what
you
started,” said a voice from nearby.
Simeon spun toward the sound, the gun instinctively pointed at the man who stood there, his skin covered in weeping wounds and scabs.
“Who the fuck are you?” Simeon demanded.
The bloody man smiled.
“Wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise,” he said as he lunged.
R
emy wasn’t alone in the embrace of darkness.
He’d at last succumbed to the paltry promise of unconsciousness but was startled to see that he wasn’t alone in the cool world of shadow.
“Hello?” Remy called to the indistinguishable shape hunkered down across from him.
“I was curious if you’d ever get here,” said a voice, strangely familiar.
It almost sounded like . . .
The shape became more defined as it rose and crossed the darkness toward him. The figure raised its hand, and it began to glow faintly, chasing away the shadows.
Remy stared at the man across from him, for a moment believing that he was staring into a mirror.
“What’s happening?” Remy asked, as much to himself as to his doppelganger.
“Where should we begin?” his double responded. “You’re being murdered by your insane best friend, and that’s just for starters.”
“You’re me—the other me,” Remy said, staring at himself.
“Yeah, I’m the one who got evicted from my body so you could come in.”
“Evicted?”
“Yeah. I was probably going to die anyway, but instead I ended up here—waiting for you.”
“You’re the one who murdered God.”
Remy’s other self became very quiet, as if thinking about that statement.
“It’s not easy to live with that knowledge,” he finally said.
It was Remy’s turn for silence.
“It’s like a cancer inside you, the darkness growing until it consumes just about everything you ever were. The fire of the divine corrupted into something else.” He touched his chest, his fingers moving beneath his shirt, opening it to reveal the dark sigils tattooed on his chest. “After a while, it takes some doing to keep it locked away, and eventually . . .”
“You can’t,” Remy answered for him, feeling the madness of the Seraphim writhing inside of him, feeding upon the misery of the world he’d become trapped in.
His other self looked at him knowingly. “Eventually, it just gets to be too much; the loss . . . the weight is too great.” He paused, his words seeming to have a physical effect upon him. This version of himself, somehow smaller.
“It breaks you . . . and then you fall.”
Remy wasn’t sure how to respond, to look at himself and see himself—broken.
“But that’s where you come in,” his double said. “With you there’s still a chance. As much as we’re the same, we’re not—it’s the little differences that separate us. You haven’t done what I did in my lifetime. . . . You’re still whole—a little cracked, a bit bent, but you’re still whole. With you, there’s still a chance to fix things.”
From somewhere in the darkness Remy heard the sound of pounding surf and moaning winds. It reminded him of a place very important to him, a place of reflection and healing.
Remy.
Remy thought he heard his name called on a distant wind and began to move deeper into the darkness in the direction of the sounds.
But a hand gripped his arm, stopping him.
“Not yet,” the other Remy said. “There’s still work to be done.”
Remy strained his ears to hear more, but the darkness had grown sadly silent. “I have to go back,” he said, trying to pull away.
“Better you than me,” his other self said.
“If I do this,” Remy said, “if I’m able to fix things . . . will I get to go back to where I’m supposed to be?”
The other Remy had turned and was walking back into the shadows. He stopped, as if considering the question, then continued on without answering.
Perhaps he did not know the answer.
But then again, maybe he did.
• • •
The Fossil’s true name danced on the tip of his tongue.
He wanted to make the forever man understand that he was not as unique as he believed.
But Simeon was too busy trying to kill him.
Good luck with that,
the Fossil thought as Simeon smashed him in the face with the butt of the golden gun. He went down hard, the scabs that already covered most of his body ripping away and causing the blood to flow.
“What a horrible-looking thing you are,” Simeon said, looking down at him. “Are you one of Chandler’s friends? His backup, perhaps? My, the pickings certainly were slim.”
The Fossil pushed himself up, his face awash with flowing blood. “Well, after all these years, you managed to get being a smug son of a bitch down pretty good,” he said, enjoying the surprised expression on his opponent’s face.
“I asked you a question, worm,” Simeon sneered. “Who are you and why are you here?”
“I’m somebody who should have done something about you a long time ago,” the Fossil said as he wiped blood from his eyes. The wound was already scabbing over, and he was able to see and appreciate Simeon’s annoyed expression.
“Do I know you?” Simeon asked, pacing before the bloody old man. “I’m sure I would have remembered someone in such grievous condition, but then again, I have been busy.”
The Fossil collected himself. “We’ve never met, as far as I know,” he said. “But we do share quite a bit in common.”
Simeon stopped, smiling a nasty, predatory grin. He still held the pistol and tapped the butt against the side of his leg. “Do we now?” He leaned menacingly closer. “Pray tell.”
Just a little bit closer,
the Fossil thought. “We’ve both been around long enough to make mistakes,” he said aloud. “A lot of mistakes.”
Simeon studied him intently, tilting his head to one side ever so slightly.
“I spent the majority of my time trying to figure out my place in the world. Why the hell was I still here?” The Fossil shifted so he was a bit closer to Simeon.
Almost there.
“I kept making the same mistakes again and again. It got bad for me for a while. In fact, I actually believed that contributing to the end of the world by bringing about the Apocalypse would take away my pain.”
The Fossil smiled as Simeon’s eyes widened.
“Sound familiar?”
Simeon quickly stepped away, pulling back the hammer and aiming the pistol at the Fossil. “Tell me who you are or . . .”
Now or never,
the Fossil thought. Then he lunged at Simeon, wrapping his scab-crusted hands around the man’s throat.
“I will tell you who I am,” the Fossil said, squeezing with all his might.
Simeon struggled wildly, his arms flailing as he tried to aim and fire the pistol.
“And you will come to understand the meaning of this moment.”
Simeon managed to fire the pistol, filling the place of Unification with the sound of thunder, but he missed the Fossil, who continued to squeeze the life from the forever man’s throat.
Frantically, Simeon tried to break the Fossil’s grip. He thrashed and flailed, and pulled his attacker across the broken stage of the Golden City. And still the Fossil stuck.
The back of Simeon’s foot connected with a piece of stone that floated three inches from the ground, tripping him up, causing him to fall backward with the Fossil atop him. The gun skittered from his grasp, out of reach.
Simeon was desperate now, reaching up with clawed hands to rip at the man’s face. But the Fossil knew pain, and this was no worse than anything he’d endured since the fall of Heaven.
Simeon’s struggles were growing weaker, and the Fossil leaned into his grip for last of the act.
For the murder of Simeon.
The Fossil lowered his face to within inches of Simeon’s, being sure to look directly into the man’s bulging, oxygen-deprived eyes. The realization should have been dawning on him that this time it would be different.
That this time he would not be coming back.
“Who?” Simeon managed, a pathetic squeak, filled with fear as the reality of the situation settled in.
“Lazarus,” the Fossil said, letting the name sink in. “I am Lazarus.”
Simeon made a last feeble attempt to overpower him, but it was all for naught. He should have known that he would be powerless against another like him.
That it would take a forever man to kill a forever man.
• • •
Remy let go of oblivion’s hand and rushed swiftly to the surface of consciousness just as his head was slammed once more against the ground.
He opened his eyes, looking up into the madness-etched face of his friend.
“Enough,” Remy ordered.
The former Guardian appeared surprised that the angel was suddenly conscious—still alive.
And Remy took that opportunity to act. He allowed that horrible, burning madness to bubble to the surface and flow from his hands. Blasts of fire hit Francis directly in the chest, lifting up and propelling him back through the air.
Francis bounced off a floating piece of Paradise and fell to the ground with a grunt.
Remy rose to his feet, the power that he fought to restrain seeking further release. How easy it would have been to set it free, to allow it to flow from his body and out into the accursed world.
What’s a little more fire and insanity?
he thought as the miasma of fire formed a writhing corona around his head.
Francis lay still for only a moment, then sprang up, ready to continue their bout.
Right then, Remy was more than happy to oblige, but a body dropped from above, landing with a sickening, wet thud between them.
Remy stared in shock at the body of the man called Simeon, eyes wide in death, his tongue thick, black, and protruding from his mouth.
“It’s done,” announced a voice from above.
Both Remy and Francis looked up to see the blood-covered Fossil peering down at them.
“It’s time that you finish what you came here to do,” he added, looking squarely at Remy.
Remy looked away from the Fossil to Francis. The former Guardian seemed confused now that Simeon’s hold was broken.
“I’m going to fix this,” Remy told him.
Francis glared, but for a moment Remy saw the madness dissipate and the old intensity of his friend return. “Why should I believe you?”
“Because I’m your friend, and I’m asking you to.”
Francis looked away. “Sorry I tried to kill you,” he mumbled. “I wasn’t myself.”
“A lot of that going around,” Remy said, turning away from his friend and beginning his ascent to God.
• • •
The Fossil stood before the frozen moment of Unification, his robes soaked with blood.
“Are you all right?” Remy asked.
“I haven’t been all right for a very long time,” he said, swaying slightly. He turned to look at Remy. “But I think that might be about to change.”
“You killed him.” Remy looked out over the edge of the ruins to where Simeon’s body lay. The forever man still looked shocked that he wasn’t alive anymore.
“I did,” the Fossil said. “And I think that might’ve been the reason why I’m still around.” The blood was really flowing from his wounds now, actually forming little puddles where he stood.
Remy focused upon the man. “You look worse than usual.”
“Yeah, I think this might be it.”
“Are you going to tell me?” Remy asked. “Before you . . .”
“Die?” The Fossil smiled widely. “I can almost believe it’ll happen now.”
“Tell me.”
“Lazarus,” the Fossil told him. “I’m Lazarus.”
Remy studied the bloody man, trying to find something that he might recognize, but it remained hidden beneath the blood and scabs. “I don’t see it, but all right.”
Lazarus chuckled. “So are you as pissed off at me as the other Remy was?”
It was far away in his thoughts, almost as if he were remembering a dream from a very long time ago, but Remy recalled the Lazarus from his own reality—how his obsession with death had led him to befriend some bad-apple angels who wanted to see the Four Horsemen bring about the end of the world. Remy had managed to stop the Horsemen and the bad angels, but Lazarus had been washed away in the deluge of the conflict and hadn’t been seen or heard from since.
“Yeah, I think I am,” Remy said.
“Well, hopefully that makes up for it,” Lazarus said, pointing at Simeon’s corpse.
“It’s a good start.” Remy shrugged.
They both laughed, the sound of their humor tapering off as Remy found himself staring again at the body of God, Lucifer in flight coming to his aid.
“He brought you here to make this right,” Lazarus said. “He brought us all here.”
“But what do I do now?” Remy asked, walking toward God as he hung in the air, in the midst of death. “Simeon said that You were still alive . . . still suffering. . . . Give me a sign. Show me how to make this right.”
There was a hole in the Creator’s forehead, and Remy found his gaze transfixed on the bloodless opening for some grotesque reason.
Then he saw the light.
At first he thought it might have been a trick of his eyes, what little light there was in the ruins of the Golden City playing with his vision, making him see things that weren’t there.
But there it was again.
Remy moved closer, his eyes never leaving the black hole in the Almighty’s forehead.
“Is this it?” Remy asked Him.
From the darkness within the hole, Remy saw flickers of light, reminding him of lightning flashes over the waters of Cape Cod on a hot summer’s night. For a moment he was transported there, smelling the ocean, the air charged with a coming storm.
“What is that?” Lazarus asked as he, too, stepped closer.
“It’s a sign,” Remy said.
He stepped up on a piece of stone so he could stare directly into the circular opening, studying the flashes of white light as they seemed to intensify. And suddenly, he was compelled to do the unthinkable.
Remy reached out, raising his fingers toward the hole. The flashes grew brighter as his hand grew closer, and he pulled back, unsure if he should follow through.
But he did, reaching into the hole—the skull—of the Lord God Almighty. Remy’s eyes widened as the skin and bone around his fingers grew more malleable.
He felt it before he saw it, his finger and thumb closing around something that caused an incredible warmth to flow through his body and fill his mind with thoughts of things to come.
Carefully, Remy withdrew his prize.
“What is it?” Lazarus asked.