“What do you mean, ‘if it happens’?”
“You saw what happened in the other place,” Mulvehill said as he pulled on his cigarette. “A real fucking mess.”
“You know about that?”
He nodded. “I know lots of stuff now.” He took another drag. “You have to stop him from setting things in motion . . . the forever man.”
Remy listened, slowly nodding—remembering that other place and who was responsible.
“Can you handle it?”
Remy smiled, but it quickly went away when he noticed the tall, dark figure standing off in the distance.
Waiting.
Mulvehill noticed the change in his expression and turned.
“Looks like my ride’s here,” he said, turning back.
The Angel of Death, Israfil, waited patiently.
“He’ll wait a bit,” Remy said. “He owes me.”
Mulvehill finished his smoke and flicked the filter toward the ground at their feet, but it never reached it, disappearing before it could become litter. “So this is it.” He seemed suddenly uncomfortable.
“Guess so.”
“I was going to have another smoke, but why bother? Might as well get it over with.”
Remy said nothing, dreading the inevitable.
“Hey, I’m okay with this,” Mulvehill said. “Seriously, I am. Sure, I would have liked to have hung around for a few more years. Y’know, retire from the force, get fatter than I am, and then go out someday drinking a good scotch while listening to the Sox play on the radio.” The homicide cop smiled. “That’d be something, wouldn’t it?”
“Heaven,” Remy said.
“Yeah,” his friend agreed.
They stood there for a moment longer, all the words that Remy thought he would say at a time such as this meaningless.
“You take care of yourself, Remy Chandler,” Mulvehill said as he stuck out his hand.
“You, too, Steven Mulvehill.” And Remy took his hand in his and gently squeezed it, then pulled his friend to him in a powerful embrace. “And thank you.”
“For what?” Mulvehill asked as he hugged him back.
“I couldn’t have asked for a better friend,” Remy said, squeezing him tight, not wanting to let go but knowing that he had very little say in the matter.
“You’re right about that,” Mulvehill said as he pulled away. He was smiling again, though there was a tinge of sadness in it.
He turned toward the dark figure still waiting patiently.
“Okay, then,” he said as he looked down at himself, attempting to smooth away the wrinkles. “Do I look all right?” he asked over his shoulder.
Remy laughed. “Gorgeous.”
Mulvehill chuckled as he began to stroll toward death.
“Take care of things for me, Remy.”
“I will.”
“Love ya, pal.”
“I love you, too.”
• • •
Remy opened his eyes to find that his wings had unfurled, closing up tightly around himself and his departed friend.
He studied the still features of Steven Mulvehill and saw a peace there that made letting go just a little bit easier.
Just a little bit.
He opened his wings and gently lifted his friend, laying him carefully on the bed. It took him a moment to realize that he wasn’t alone. He furled his wings as he stood on bare, trembling legs, taking a moment to process, the other place—what had slowly become
the
reality for him for what seemed like a very long time—gradually receding into the background of his mind as another reality—
his
reality—slid back in to retake its place.
“I’m back,” he said, his voice sounding weak and old.
Linda came at him in a rush, but Marlowe, barking insanely, beat her, nearly knocking Remy to the floor in his excitement. He bent down, allowing the dog to frantically lick his face, before he was roughly pulled into Linda’s arms.
Her embrace was invigorating, life-affirming, and he found himself growing stronger the longer he held her.
“I thought I would never see you again,” she whispered in his ear.
“But here I am,” he answered, squeezing her tightly.
“Yes, here you are,” she said, her lips warm against his neck.
He looked over his shoulder to see the others there, amidst the remains of great violence.
“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you all for fighting for me.”
Ashley ran to embrace him as Linda had. Marlowe continued to circle around them excitedly, tail wagging, barking happily.
Squire stood off to the side, twirling a bloodstained axe in one hand.
“Do you want to get in on this?” Remy asked.
“Naw,” the goblin answered. “I’m good.”
Samson had been blocking the doorway with his mass, and Remy could see his children behind him. But he was surprised when another figure squeezed past the Biblical strongman to enter the room.
“You,” Remy said, feeling his anger surge.
Linda and Ashley let go of Remy, feeling the change in his body, as he strode to stand before the man called Lazarus.
“I thought you died,” Remy said.
Lazarus stared at the floor, shaking his head. “No,” he said softly, a tremble in his reply. “For what I did . . . for what I tried to do . . . I didn’t deserve it.”
“You tried to end the world. Damn right you didn’t deserve it,” Remy said, barely holding his anger in check.
“I know I did wrong, but I’ve been working to make amends,” Lazarus said. He held out a hand as if to ward something off, as if the fury radiating from Remy were a physical thing. “I’ve been helping God with Unification . . . watching . . . making sure that the other one . . .”
“The other one . . . ?” Remy questioned.
“Simeon,” Lazarus said, finally looking up into Remy’s eyes.
“He has to be stopped,” Remy said, feeling the divine fires inside him surge to life.
“I know where he is,” Lazarus said. “I can take you to him.”
M
eg Miller had a feeling.
She’d opened her eyes that morning and had a sense that something was going to happen. It wasn’t a bad feeling, like that sense of dread, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
No, something wonderful was coming, and she knew it right down in the core of her soul.
Meg wasn’t a religious person in the least, but what she experienced that morning as she rolled out of bed, preparing for work as a paralegal at Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy, could only be described as spiritual.
And whatever it was, it affected her deep to the core of her being, lifting her up and making her feel as though what was coming was going to change everything.
Change the world.
She walked across the cold tile floor and stood at the kitchen window of her North End condo, looking up into an unusually blue sky.
Meg smiled. She was ready.
• • •
Joe knew he was going to die.
He’d known as soon as they’d admitted to him the nursing home that that was probably it for him. But he was okay with that. At ninety-three, he’d lived a good and long life.
His heart hadn’t been right for years, and it finally was giving out on him. Fluid, the docs had said. They’d offered surgery but then said he probably wouldn’t make it anyway.
“Then why bother?”
he’d asked them, and they’d just nodded their heads.
His kids were torn, but they understood. His time was just running down.
They’d been with him since he got there, standing by his bedside, holding his hand and telling him how much they loved him. It was nice; he appreciated them being there, but he knew his time was close, and truth to tell, he wanted to do it alone.
He’d practically cheered when they’d gone for coffee, even though he hadn’t been able to do much of anything, having been pretty much unresponsive since the ambulance had brought him in.
Yeah, he hated to do it to them, but it was something he strongly felt he should do alone. What was it his father used to say?
“I came into this world alone, and I plan on going out the same way.”
And his dad had done just that, dropping dead of a heart attack after taking a shower when he got home from working third shift. When Joe’s mother got to him, Dad was long gone.
Joe could feel his heart slowing down, the beats becoming more irregular. Yeah, it wouldn’t be long now.
Within the darkness of his closed eyes, he saw a flash and focused on the warm light. And suddenly from the light there was a vision unlike anything he’d ever seen before. It was as if his eyes were open and he was looking out the window of some grand villa somewhere like where he’d been stationed during World War II. The sky was filled with what appeared to be a city . . . a city unlike anything he had ever seen before. It was everywhere he looked—all-encompassing—but he had a sense that it was not whole.
That it was somehow incomplete.
But something was about to happen, something that would make this city—
Heaven
; suddenly he knew the city was Heaven—whole for the first time in a very long time.
And he was going to be there to see it.
Joe smiled as his heart slowed, the beats of the once powerful muscle coming less and less until they were so infrequent that his body shut down, and Joe left the world to travel to another, to witness something.
Incredible.
• • •
Syed Hamza had planned to do evil this day.
He’d planned to strap a device loaded with explosives to his chest and walk into a crowded marketplace in Pakistan and detonate it.
At one time not too long ago—hours, really—he’d believed that he was doing such a terrible thing in the name of his God, but now . . .
Syed sat upon the floor of his tiny apartment, the murderous device lying unassembled upon a towel in front of him, and cried.
For God had sent him a vision. And there would be no acts of violence perpetrated in His name on this day, or any day forward.
God was about to touch the world, and any who would do evil in His name would suffer greatly.
It would be a time of great celebration.
It would be a time of something wondrous.
• • •
The demon sat nestled in the darkness at the back of Methuselah’s, a wall of empty glasses stacked before him, ready to add another to the fortification.
He was angry, angry at the sensations he was experiencing as the divine being—the so-called Creator of the universe—prepared for something of great magnitude.
And he knew, as he studied the faces of various beings that inhabited the saloon as he did, that he wasn’t the only who felt it. Some wore disgusting expressions of bliss, while others—such as himself—wanted to scream and perform acts of extreme violence in response to this coming cosmic event.
His race had always had an aversion to the divine.
The demon finished his drink, enjoying the dull buzz that he was experiencing behind his pointed ears. It was helping to drown out the sensations being broadcast through the ether, but the demon still felt it in the center of his brain, like an annoying itch that he couldn’t scratch.
Yes, the drinking helped, but also the recollection of the act he had perpetrated upon one of the divine beings who most assuredly would have some part to play in the Heavenly pageant unfolding within the universe.
The demon smiled, remembering how angry he had been in this very establishment, when an angel of Heaven had insulted him as only the arrogant messengers of God were capable of. This one—this Remy Chandler—had looked upon him as nothing, a stain upon the fabric of reality.
The waitress brought him another round, and he grunted his thanks as she placed the liquor before him. Gathering up the empties and placing them upon her tray, she left him with a better view of the bar and its patrons.
If only they were aware of what he had done. He had struck back against the arrogance of Heaven, and the slights heaped upon his species. He had ordered a contract on the angel who’d slighted him, this Remy Chandler.
The demon smiled. The Bone Masters never failed. He wished he could have been there to see it for himself, but he took great joy in the knowledge that he had been responsible for the Seraphim’s death.
He drank deeply from his latest beverage, allowing the effects to wash over him, and suddenly, he could no longer keep it to himself.
The demon stood abruptly, his chair shrieking behind him as it skidded across the floor. A part of his brain tried to warn him to be quiet, but he ignored it. He had to make them aware of what he had done.
He felt multiple sets of eyes upon him, especially the minotaur at the front door. Even the golem owner behind the bar had stopped making drinks and was watching him suspiciously.
He should have sat back down, but he couldn’t hold it back.
He wanted them all to know that a force of darkness sometimes won over the light.
Raising his glass, he looked around at all who watched him. “To Remy Chandler,” the demon announced. “One less flaming jewel in the Almighty’s crown.” And then he downed what was left of his drink and smiled at those watching him.
“Drinks for everyone,” the demon ordered. “In honor of an angel fallen too soon.” And then he began to laugh, sitting back down in his pocket of darkness, the attention of the tavern upon him.
That’s it,
he thought.
Look at me. Look at me and wonder: Was I responsible for the death of an angel of the Lord?
The demon smiled so widely that it nearly split his face.
• • •
Remy stepped out into the dusk on Pinckney Street. It was strangely quiet on the Hill, the carnage that he had left behind in the apartment like another world entirely.
Linda and Marlowe joined him, standing behind him as he gazed off into the ether, feeling the call of Heaven.
“What is that?” Linda asked, slipping her warm hand into his.
“You can feel it?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, searching the sky for something she could not see.
“It’s something that has been a long time coming,” Remy told her. Marlowe sniffed around the base of a tree near the front of the brownstone, then lifted his leg, watering it with a spray of urine.
“What did you call it?” she asked him. “Unification?”
“That’s it,” he said. “Heaven moving to be whole again . . . and the start of something new.”
Others on the Hill had come out of their homes, to go to work the night shift, or walk the dog, or go for a run. And they stopped as well, as if hearing something pleasant off in the distance.
“They’re hearing it, too,” Linda said.
“Some are more sensitive than others,” Remy answered. “Most will just get a feeling that something is about to be different.”
He could sense the others behind him now.
“We cleaned up the best we could,” Samson said.
“The shadow beasts will be eating good for quite some time,” Squire added, the goblin’s use of shadows to travel to other worlds where hungry beasts resided perfect for the disposal of the Bone Master assassins’ bodies.
“I want to thank you all for what you’ve done,” Remy said, turning to them. “Seriously, I can’t thank you enough.”
Samson laughed, and his children smiled.
“When the Morningstar contacts you personally and requests your services, who are we to say no?”
Remy found himself rankled by the mention of the fallen son of Heaven, but reminded himself that soon Lucifer, the son of the Morning, would be back in the good graces of Heaven.
“I took care of that favor,” Squire said, giving Remy the nod.
He had asked Squire to take Steven’s body back to his apartment.
“Thank you, Squire.”
Lazarus was the last to leave the brownstone.
“Are we ready?” Remy asked.
The dark-skinned man nodded.
“Show me.” Remy unfurled his wings, inviting Lazarus to step inside.
“Take me to the forever man.”
• • •
Francis stood in front of his dresser mirror and straightened the knot of his tie. Staring at his reflection, he again attempted to recall something that nibbled aggressively at the back of his mind. Something that he had been doing—of great importance, he believed—but now . . .
He had other things to concern himself with now, things of great cosmic significance. His employer was being welcomed back into the fold, as was he, and all the others who had fallen during, and after, the Great War in Heaven.
It was a day that he’d truly never thought he’d see.
Stepping back, he got a better look at himself in the mirror.
Looking good,
he thought, bringing his hand down the front of his suit jacket, smoothing away any potential wrinkles. He wanted to look his best; after all, one did not get welcomed back to Heaven every day. Checking himself from every angle, Francis decided that he looked all right. He stepped away from the mirror and went out to the living room, where the golden Pitiless pistol waited for him atop the coffee table.
Can’t go anywhere without this,
he thought as he picked up the gun. With little thought to his actions, Francis flipped open the cylinder, then reached into the front pocket of his shirt and removed a single bullet.
The bullet throbbed with incredible power—the power to create or to destroy—but Francis did not think of such things as he loaded it into the chamber and flipped the cylinder closed with a loud snap. The Pitiless then disappeared into an inside pocket of his suit coat.
He could feel it there, silently thrumming, almost like a small animal purring contentedly.
Unbuttoning his jacket, he sat down in his favorite leather recliner and waited. He glanced at his watch for no good reason; there had never been a time mentioned. It would happen when it happened.
But he could sense that things were moving in the ether, sliding into position. His eyes drifted to the closet door, where an entrance to the Hell prison, Tartarus, had once existed, but no more. Once Lucifer had returned to power, he’d torn down the prison and reconfigured Hell to a realm that could rival Heaven in its awesomeness. Things had really changed for his boss.
He glanced at his watch again and was considering getting up to check his reflection again just in case, when he felt the sudden change in the atmosphere of the room. Francis’ eyes shot immediately to the closet door; an eerie greenish light poured out from beneath it.
They’re opening the gateway again,
he thought as he stood.
He buttoned his jacket, then ran a hand down the front of his suit as the closet door swung open to reveal an entrance to Lucifer’s new Hell.
Impressive,
he thought as he slowly approached the opening, the Pitiless against his chest, pulsing with life.
And with the potential for death.
• • •
The Archangel Michael stood upon the edge of the Garden as it hurtled through the curtains of reality, on its way back to where it had originated.
Called home by the Father of creation.
Michael smiled, as did his faithful legions, for they had been successful in cleansing the Garden of something infernal in its design.
The Shaitan waited in the dirt of Eden, untouched by the archangels, rendered invisible to the divine warriors by the words of the human, Simeon.
The Lord God had assigned them a task, and they had met it with great success. The Garden of Eden would return, to become part of Heaven once again, as it had been so long ago when the universe was young and uncomplicated. Michael kept his thoughts to himself, still believing that this—this Unification—was the worst of ideas, but he hoped that he would be proven wrong—
The human Simeon had said that they shared a common hatred, an abhorrence of the Almighty and the kingdom that He presided over. Simeon had told them he would give them what they most desired—what he most desired—and in so doing they would be responsible for the fall of Heaven. The Shaitan found no downside to this and agreed to the human’s proposal.
But deep down, in the core of his being, Michael suspected that he wasn’t wrong. The Morningstar could not be trusted, for he would bring ruin to Heaven.