Filling it with light.
• • •
Simeon seethed.
All the anger and fury contained within his body threatened to explode. And he wished that he could, the intensity of his rage most assuredly capable of obliterating the Heavens and all that existed within them.
The Seraphim had tossed him away, abandoning him—to where?
Simeon floated in a sea of darkness. He had drifted toward the changing landscape of Heaven when there came a blinding flash, and then there was nothing.
Darkness.
He extended his arms to either side, feeling nothing in the pitch black.
Was this his punishment? Had the Lord God Almighty banished him to live eternally in a place of perpetual shadow? It would be just like that merciless being to do such a thing. To want to torture him further.
Now not only would he live on and on, but he would do it alone, and in total darkness.
A fitting punishment for one who hated God with every fiber of his being. Maybe the Lord expected him to reflect upon his evil, to realize the error of his ways, and to repent his sins.
Simeon wouldn’t dream of it.
Instead he would spend eternity thinking of ways to escape the endless night of this prison, and the awful things he would do to God and those He favored.
“As long as there is life in this body,” Simeon snarled as he floated in a sea of black, “I will never forgive.”
Never.
It was as if something—some
body
—was listening.
The darkness was gone, and Simeon was . . .
He did not recognize his surroundings at first, the faces of those who hung over him as he lay.
But then it came to him. How long had it been since he last thought of them? His family . . . his wife, daughter, and son. His very first family . . . the family that he’d had in the life before his death.
Before he had been brought back.
They were sitting at his bedside, within the tiny desert hut that had been his home then. They were praying for him between their tears. He wanted to scream at them to stop . . . that the God they prayed to was a monster.
But he was too weak, too tired from the sickness that had ravaged his body.
Was this further torture from the God that hated him? To relive the moment when he’d first bid farewell to the family that loved him so? To finally be released from the sickness and pain?
To die, and know the joy of spiritual bliss as his soul returned to the stuff of creation?
Was that how he would now be punished?
Simeon glanced up again at the family that he had loved so very much. To see them again was something special, for he had nearly forgotten their loving faces.
But now there was another face—an older man whom Simeon did not recognize, standing beside the foot of the bed.
Who?
But as the old man looked at him, Simeon knew.
His eyes overflowed with hate as he glared at the stranger.
Torture me all you like,
he wanted to scream,
but I will never forgive you
.
The old man stepped closer, reaching out to place a cool hand upon Simeon’s feverish brow, and all the anger and hate that had fueled his purpose for countless millennia left him.
“For all the pain,”
the old man spoke,
“I give you release.”
And the rage that had become so much a part of him was gone, burned away like the morning fog.
Simeon lay there as he had so very, very long ago, tired from the sickness that ravaged him, ready to go on. Looking up into the face of the old man.
Looking into the eyes of God, Simeon told Him that he was ready.
God whispered how sorry He was, leaning forward to place a gentle kiss upon his dampened brow.
With his last breath, Simeon forgave Him.
And lived no more.
T
he demon sat in his web of darkness, drowning his sorrows in drink after drink.
The angel was alive.
He had hired the greatest of assassins, and the Bone Masters had failed. The Seraphim still lived.
The demon grabbed his glass and drained it, slamming the empty down upon the wooden tabletop loud enough for the waitress to hear. He looked around but did not see her—in fact, the bar seemed to be empty.
“Waitress!” he bellowed.
He hoped that the golem heard him, heard the anger in his voice, and fired the bitch for not serving him properly. But he didn’t see the golem, either. The demon’s eyes ticked to the entrance of the establishment and saw that even the minotaur doorman wasn’t in his usual place.
What’s going on?
he wondered. He grabbed the empties that surrounded him, tossing them back, hoping for one more sip from each, as he waited for someone to serve him.
But the bar remained empty.
The demon was about to get up and explore, when he at last saw somebody come out from the back. “About fucking time,” he hissed, holding up one of his empties and giving it a shake.
The figure did not seem to take note of his need, walking toward where he’d taken up residence for the last five hours or so.
“A drink!” he screamed at the figure, who still did not stop.
It was then that he noticed the figure wore a heavy, hooded cloak, similar to the ones worn by . . .
“They’re all dead,” the figure said, slowly removing the covering around his head to reveal the pale guise of a Bone Master assassin.
“What?” the demon squawked. “Who’s dead?”
The Bone Master remained silent, staring at him with eyes that burned with unquenchable hatred.
The demon was unable to hold his tongue. “Well, I’ll tell you who’s not dead: the guy I paid my life savings to have killed, that’s who’s not dead.”
“It is all because of you that we are no more. Except for me, Ripper of Souls, the Bone Masters are extinct. And it is all because of you.”
The demon jumped up, sending his heavy wooden chair flipping to the floor. “I don’t know what you’re going on about, but I want what I paid for,” he snarled. “I don’t care what happened to the other Bone Masters. . . . I don’t care that you’re the last one; I expect you to deliver what I was promised.”
“And would that be a hit on an angel by the name of Remy Chandler?” A human in a dark suit emerged from a patch of darkness across the bar and strode over to join them.
“What’s it to you?” The demon bared his rows of razor-sharp teeth.
“I need to be sure,” the stranger explained.
“So what if I did?” the demon asked. “He a friend of yours or something?”
The human smiled and unbuttoned his jacket. “As a matter of fact, he is.” From the inside pocket of his suit coat the man removed a pouch, heavy with its contents. He hefted the leather purse and then tossed it on the table top with a clatter.
“That’s good enough for me,” the man addressed the Bone Master, adjusting the black, horn-rimmed glasses on his face.
“What’s that?” the demon asked, his clawed fingers reaching for the pouch.
The assassin’s movements were a blur as he pinned the demon’s hand to the table with a knife. The demon screamed and tried to pry the blade up, but it was imbedded, too, in the wood of the table.
“That’s his payment,” the stranger said.
The demon didn’t understand. “Payment? Payment for what?”
The stranger smiled again. “Payment for the murder of the piece of shit that tried to have my friend put down.”
The demon’s eyes widened, and his survival instincts kicked into high gear. He pulled his hand up from the table. The pain was excruciating, but he knew what was to come would be much worse.
And all too final.
With a wet, ripping sound, his hand came free, and he stumbled backward, tripping over his overturned chair and landing on the floor.
The Bone Master loomed above him. “All dead, because of you,” the assassin said mournfully. His hands emerged from within his cloak, clutching a weapon of bone.
The demon didn’t even have a chance to beg for his life before he was dead.
• • •
Loose ends.
Francis hated them more than just about anything else. They prevented him from thinking clearly, from focusing on the future. No matter how hard he’d tried to let go, no matter that his friend had survived, that Heaven and the universe had managed to pull through once again, it didn’t change the fact that someone—some
thing
—had put a contract out on Remy Chandler and had nearly killed him.
That didn’t sit well with the Guardian angel Francis.
Guardian angel.
It still gave him quite a kick that he had been returned to his full status as a Guardian, that his penance had been counted and he’d been absolved of his sins, and he’d been given back his title and all that it entailed. Yes, he still worked for the Morningstar, but since Unification, that was no longer such a dirty thing.
Francis watched the Bone Master as he stood over his prey, his living weapon of bone, cartilage, and sinew dangling from his hand.
Loose ends still dangling in the breeze. It was time to wrap them up once and for all.
He’d never expected to hear from Methuselah. The golem bar owner tried to keep mum on his clientele and their doings, but having one of his demon regulars flapping his gums about Chandler must not have sat well with him, and he’d made the call.
Originally Francis had planned to do it himself, but then he’d realized that would take care of only one of the loose ends.
And there were two.
He’d thought that all the Bone Masters had been destroyed in one way or another, but he learned through the grapevine that one had survived—driven nearly insane by the murder of his species and hell-bent on discovering who was responsible. But if a Bone Master assassin still lived . . .
“You do good work,” Francis complimented.
The Bone Master just stood there, staring at the dead demon, who had already begun to rot and stink up the joint. “I perform the function that I was born for . . . and what I am paid to do.”
“The Bone Master assassins,” Francis said. “The most proficient killers in existence, I hear. . . . Well, they used to be.”
The Bone Master turned his dark gaze upon him.
“I hear that you’re the last of them,” Francis added. “Is that true?”
The assassin seemed visibly shaken. “The entire guild, even the uninitiated, have been killed.”
“Wow, that really sucks,” Francis said. “And this is the piece of shit that was responsible for making that happen?” He pointed to the dead demon on the floor of the bar.
The Bone Master looked back to the corpse and snarled. “This one hired us to slay an angel of Heaven who had offended him.”
“And what, it didn’t go so well?” Francis asked curiously.
“The angel did not die, and when my brothers attempted to complete the contract . . .”
“Let me guess—his friends didn’t take too kindly to that.”
The demon assassin glared at him, eyes shiny and dark with madness.
“His friends,” the Bone Master said with a snarl.
“So because you Bone Master types wouldn’t pull back on a contract put out by this asshole”—Francis pointed to the dead demon again—“your entire species, except for you, has been wiped out.”
The demon assassin trembled with repressed fury.
“And the contract, as it stands now?” Francis asked.
“Still unfulfilled.”
“So let me get this straight,” Francis said. “Even with the guy who took out the contract dead at your feet, and only one of you Bone Masters left alive, you’re still planning on carrying out that contract?”
The Bone Master puffed out his chest proudly. “As the last, it is my responsibility to . . .”
“Thanks; that’s all I needed to hear.” In one fluid movement, Francis pulled the revolver from inside his jacket and fired a single shot into the killer’s forehead.
The Bone Master’s eyes went wide in death, as if not believing what had just occurred. His body fell backward, landing splayed across one of the wooden tables.
“Stupid son of a bitch,” Francis said, returning the pistol to the inside of his jacket. “And here I was going to let you live.”
He’d hoped the assassin would have been smarter, to realize that the idea of fulfilling the contract on Remy Chandler just wasn’t worth it anymore.
So much for common sense.
“So are we done here or what?” asked a voice from across the bar.
Francis looked up to see Squire entering from the kitchen. He was being followed by the sorcerer Angus Heath, who was the cook at Methuselah’s; the minotaur, Phil; and the establishment’s owner, Methuselah himself.
“Yeah,” Francis said, satisfied that all the dangling threads had been snipped away. “I think we’re good.”
Squire came to stand with him. The goblin was holding a plate of chicken wings in one hand and eating them with the other.
“So you had to kill him?” Squire asked about the Bone Master.
“Yeah,” Francis said. “He was still planning on going after Remy.”
The goblin shook his head as he had another wing, sucking the bone clean of meat in a matter of seconds. “You’d think he would have quit while he was ahead.”
“I suppose it must have something to do with honor,” Francis said as he stared at the cooling corpse of the killer atop the wooden table.
“Something to do with being fucking stupid, if you ask me,” Squire added his two cents.
“We’ve got to clean up,” Francis said, going to Bone Master’s corpse. “Help me with the other one.”
“I’m eating,” Squire complained.
“You’re always eating,” Francis said, hauling the corpse up from the table and slinging it over his shoulder with a grunt.
“And you’re very hurtful,” Squire retorted, setting his plate on another table and taking the legs of the dead demon.
Francis headed to the front of the bar.
“Sorry about the mess,” he apologized to Methuselah.
“No worries,” the golem said as he went to his place behind the bar. “Nothing that a mop and a bucket of soapy water can’t take care of . . . Right, Phil?”
The minotaur snorted by the front door.
“As if I don’t have enough to do,” he said, picking up a magazine of crossword puzzles.
Francis pulled from his pocket the satchel of coins he’d used to pay the now-dead assassin and tossed them onto the bar with a heavy jingle.
“For your troubles.”
“You’re too kind,” Methuselah responded, his great stone fingers closing around the purse and making it disappear somewhere beneath the bar.
“Could probably do up a pretty good stew with those two,” Heath said, wiping his hands on the stained apron that covered his protruding belly.
“Sorry, they’ve already been promised to a hungry lady,” Francis said, moving past the sorcerer/head chef and into the kitchen, heading for the back exit.
“Pardon me?” Heath questioned as Squire followed, dragging the demon by the legs. “Is this somebody special?”
“Oh, she’s special all right,” Squire answered, maneuvering the corpse around the corner and into the kitchen behind Francis. “In fact, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything quite like her.”
“Sounds mysterious,” Heath said with a laugh from outside the kitchen.
Francis waited at the screen door for Squire, holding it open with his shoulder as Squire dragged the demon corpse behind him.
In Methuselah’s back alley, a beautiful black 1960 Lincoln Continental purred.
The door slammed closed behind them with a clatter as they made their way to the front of the car to deposit their goods.
“Here ya go, sweetheart,” Francis said, dropping the body down in front of Leona. “Eat up.”
Squire dragged the demon’s body alongside the Bone Master’s and dropped his legs.
“You might want to step back,” Francis said, just as the car lunged forward with a roar of its engine, the front grill opening wide with the metallic screech of rending metal, and began to feed upon the corpses before it.
“Ain’t that a sight,” Squire said.
“Isn’t it, though?” Francis said.
The bodies were gone in less than a minute, and Francis knew that it was time to go.
“So, where to now?” Squire asked, climbing into the passenger seat and slamming the door closed.
“I’ve got to go to work,” Francis said, putting the car in drive.
“Matters of the newly formed Kingdom, is it?” Squire asked with a grin. “Must be kind of exciting with everything being all shiny and new.”
Francis held on to the steering wheel but didn’t really need to do anything at all. Leona knew the way.
“I guess,” he said with a shrug. “Shiny and new, but there’s still plenty of darkness there, which is why I still have a job.”
Squire was silent.
“Are they hiring?” he asked suddenly.
“What? Are you looking for a job?”
The goblin gave him a shit-eating grin. “Sure,” he shrugged. “I could use the dough, and I’ve got a talent or two that could be beneficial.”
“Insatiable hunger? Don’t really see the use for that.”
“Fuck you,” Squire squawked. “Seriously, if I got a job there, maybe we could be partners.”
“Oh no.”
“Yeah, think of it,” Squire said.
“No thanks.”
“We could be like Cagney and Lacey.”
“Who?”
“Simon and Simon?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Jake and the Fatman?”
“I think you can get out here,” Francis said, nothing but perpetual darkness outside the car as they traveled through the fabric of reality.
“Anyplace to eat out there?” Squire asked. “I’m fucking starved.”
• • •
Remy sat on his rooftop deck, snoring dog by his chair, and gazed up into the Heavens at the new star blazing in the sky. He missed his friend.
It was on nights like this, with summer just around the corner, when he knew that he would miss him the most.
Remy reached for the bottle of Glenlivet and poured himself two fingers of the fine scotch.
“Toasting Steven again?” asked a voice from nearby.